“Like a Really Weird School Trip”: Behind the Lines

“Like a really weird school trip”:

Behind the Lines of the Trent Building Student Occupation

Impact’s Features Editor, Anna Friel, went to the Trent building at the height of the occupation to speak with the protesting students and gain an insight into their motivations and daily routine.

It’s four o’clock on a Saturday and I’m heading into Trent Building. Usually, I’d come here for lectures, but not today. On this occasion, I’m meeting those inhabiting Trent to get an inside look at the student occupation in the University’s management corridor.

I don’t know what I expected when I approached the site of the resistance, but it was not a smiling security guard sat on a chair, cheerily directing me towards the protest. Once I passed the barricade and got to sit down with one of the occupiers, though, I got a real sense of just how taxing it can be to hole yourself up in a corridor with around 50 other people, some in shifts, some there permanently, for over a week.

They have many motives, but principally they want management to respond to the demands of the University and College Union (UCU): the union for higher education staff. The empathy they have for the staff’s situation was clear as they told me how the latest devaluation of the pension fund will be economically crippling for many when they retire with an unlivable annual payment.

Casualisation is another issue, they tell me. Staff on increasingly short-term contracts with no benefits or employment protection are living in constant fear of their future, and what they call the University’s “half measures” to ameliorate this is too little and too late. The pay of lecturers being constantly lessened is also a large point of contention. UK university staff’s pay has decreased, in real terms, by 20% since 2009, and pay inequality in the form of the gender, BAME, and disability pay gaps at universities form a huge aspect of the UCU’s fight. All of this is relayed to me as we sit outside the office of Vice-Chancellor Shearer West who, in the 2019-2020 pay period, earned over £325,000 when factoring in annual pay, pension contributions, and bonuses. The disdain from the occupiers is clear.

These are not their only demands, though. My friend cites a desire to demilitarize the University, which has a partnership with BAE Systems: a company that develops weapons and sold £15bn worth of arms and services to the Saudi military during their assault on Yemen. They also stand against the hostile environment policies brought in by the government and applied to universities in 2012, resulting in what some call a pernicious surveillance operation on international students and migrant staff. Finally, they mention the conditions of learning themselves. Classroom sizes have increased dramatically in recent years and lecturers are forced to work longer unpaid hours to mark assignments properly. Ultimately, they say, we are paying for a quality of education that is decreasing. Staff who genuinely care about our learning are being put in a position where they must cut corners and be “mercenary” with our education, as “they don’t have the time or money to invest in us”.

When I visited, they had already been occupying the offices for over five days and had not heard anything from University management, despite their efforts to open a dialogue. The security staff, on the other hand, had been very hospitable. The occupiers voiced their guilt that a security guard always had to be stationed outside the corridor. And so, they had been bringing the guards cups of tea, whilst the guards in turn shared some sandwiches. At the end of the day, they say, it is their pay too that they are fighting for. In comparison to Keighton Auditorium, which they had previously occupied, Trent is much more difficult to sleep in. Where Keighton had large, comfortable chairs that could be used as beds, Trent only has the floor. As I walk between the many people lying on thin roll mats, I think about how uncomfortable they must become night after night. One of the occupiers admits that what they want the most at that moment is just one night in a bed. In fact, the cycle of the day has been another unexpected challenge for them. Apart from one small room, the lights are left on 24/7 in the corridor with no way to turn them off. Time dilates; days and nights merge into one, and as I walk between the rooms, I see signs taped to some doors imploring me not to go in as someone is trying to sleep inside.

Food has been another challenge. Apart from a kettle, which they keep in the bathroom because “fire safety comes first”, they have no way of cooking or heating food. Many of them have been living off pot noodles which, after a while, certainly takes its toll. Students, lecturers and security have been bringing them various bits of food throughout the week which has helped, but one of them jokingly admits that they had to get some multivitamin tablets as “things were shutting down”.

There is a bathroom with a shower on the corridor – a luxury compared to Keighton – so they have been able to maintain better hygiene this time around, evident as I poke through the piles of soap, toothbrushes and toothpastes on the windowsill. Shoes, however, have been a nightmare. “You don’t realise, until you’re in a room with 20 pairs of shoes, just how much they reek,” one of them tells me. “I’ve had to go and get some Ambi Pur plug-ins but there’s only so much you can do.”

To keep order in the day and maintain morale, they plan lots of activities such as eating meals together, playing board games, and organising film, party, music and poetry nights. Not only does this break up the monotony, but it also helps them do work, they say. Most of the occupants have carried on studying for their course whilst behind the barricade – a task made much easier when they maintain some structure to their time.

Being in the same room with the same people, day in and day out, in an environment that doesn’t reflect time can be stressful, however. To combat this, they hold a meeting every day to check in with everyone and make sure they’re all on the same page. They have also devised a welfare team to ensure everyone is coping and to resolve any potential issues.

At the end of the interview, I was given a tour around their corridor and its rooms, before bidding my goodbyes. Walking away, I reflect on what to me was a very interesting story to cover, but for them, has been a taxing experience for a cause you can tell they are genuinely extremely passionate about. Although they all seem to be firm friends, and have made considerable efforts amongst themselves to keep spirits high, it is disheartening to see just how far this protest has had to go in order to gain management’s attention.

The following Friday, on their twelfth day of occupation, they were forced to leave after the University sent a representative from the court with a notice threatening legal action. Encapsulating the overall experience, one occupier simply described it as being on “a really weird school trip”.

By Anna Friel

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