Posts Tagged ‘KCL’

A student from King’s College London (KCL) has sparked off a sexism row after claims he verbally abused a female member of Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA).

Vitus van Rij, 18, allegedly told Isabella Burton, a second year Oxford theology student who was giving a speech during an OUCA education debate, to “shush”, adding “you’re a woman”.

Van Rij, a member of KCL Conservative Society, seems to have arrived in Oxford from London with a delegation from UCL Conservative Society, invited guests of OUCA. He is said to have then started chanting “kitchen, kitchen, kitchen, get back to the kitchen”.

The Daily Telegraph reported that he went on to tell her to “go back to washing the dishes” instead of debating political topics.

Many students reportedly felt that the event organisers were slow to react to the sexist comments, but he was eventually ejected by Oxford Union president Laura Winwood who also publicly condemned the incident on stage. She and OUCA President Natalie Shina said that “misogyny is not tolerated” on Union premises.

Mr van Rij, understood to be from Belgium and studying in the War Studies department at King’s, is now banned from UCL Conservative events and OUCA events.

According to the Daily Telepgraph, Kieran Weisberg, the president of UCL Conservatives, said he was not sure how van Rij came to be at the event, but may have heard of it through Facebook.

OUCA founded in 1924, is one of the oldest student political organisations in the country. It has only recently been re-affiliated as a society – and is once again able to use the university’s name – after a racist joke was told at a hustings event last year.

Past presidents of the association include former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath, as well as current Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Van Rij is said to have refused to apologise for his comments.

The President of KCL Conservative Society, Simon Moorcroft, told London Student: “Obviously I want to stress that he was attending as an individual and not representing our society. Clearly the comments are unacceptable and certainly we will not tolerate this sort of behaviour. He has caused distress to the individual who these comments were directed at, and again, it’s not acceptable, it goes against everything that the Conservative Party and King’s College Conservatives stand for.”

He said that van Rij would be banned from attending future events and that the society’s committee “intend to terminate his membership as soon as we can”, following the Students Union’s procedures.

“We don’t want him as a member”, he said.

King’s College London (KCL) will not force any compulsory redundancies in the School of Arts and Humanities it was announced on Tuesday, after months of uncertainty and several large scale protests from staff and students.

Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of Arts & Humanities, signed a ‘consultation document’ dated 18th May 2010, which states that: “At the end of the Consultation period, the School has identified the savings required by means other than compulsory redundancies”.

Peter Ridley, Philosophy Research Student Course Representative, who created a Facebook group with nearly three and a half thousand members called ‘Stop Philosophy Cuts at King’s’ said: “We are very pleased with the outcome of the restructuring process, which we see as a complete turn-around on the part of King’s management, and a great victory for those of us who have been putting pressure on them by raising international awareness and presenting reasoned arguments.

“It should be noted that there will now be no compulsory redundancies when twenty-two were initially planned.”

But he added: “However more cuts are likely to be required in the next few years as higher-education funding is further reduced and King’s management continues to implement its ‘Strategic Plan’. We are not resting on our laurels and are aware that the worst may be yet to come.”

The influence of protests and petitions from students and staff is explicitly acknowledged in the consultation document published online. Students’ views are said to have “been critical to informing the outcome of the consultation” and “Submissions and opinions of members of the external academic community” were “also fully considered.”

In February this year London Student reported on the growing opposition faced by college management to the changes they were proposing. The School of Arts and Humanities was required to reduce its recurrent costs by £2.4 million by 2012 and it was expected that at least 22 lecturers would be sacked. The University and College Union (UCU) estimated that more than 200 jobs were at risk at King’s and around 500 could be lost overall, while Jim Wolfreys, UCU President at KCL, condemned what he called “draconian measures”.

Students submitted a petition entitled ‘We Support our Teachers’, opposing job cuts generally and criticising the university’s communication with students. Palmowski calls it “an important document of student concern”, and says it “will influence future decision-making in the School.”

Thousands of signatures were collected by Philosophy graduate students in the department over proposed cuts in their department, and over 8000 people signed a petition to ‘Save Palaeography’ at King’s – the only Chair of Palaeography in the country.

Letters of opposition flooded in; academics at UCL and other British institutions described the proposed staff cuts as “savage”; a February 1^st letter signed by signed by 335 academics from universities across the world, said they were “aghast” at the plans and urged the college to “reconsider your plans”. High profile academics including Harvard Professor Stephen Pinker penned individual letters questioning the measures.

A series of demonstrations put additional pressure on KCL management – who now say that “a range of voluntary severance packages, relocations, early retirements, non-replacement of retired staff, and the replacement of retiring staff with early-career academics” will be used rather than compulsory redundancies. On march 20^th March nearly 1000 students and staff marched to Westminster and a ballot on industrial saw a historic  vote in favour followed by the first ever strikes the institution had seen, on March 30^th, May 5^th and May 6^th.

King’s is understood to be sticking to plans to make savings “of at least 10 per cent over the next two years” across all departments. It has cut the equivalent of 26 full time teaching posts through non-compulsory means and says a further 2 are likely to be finalized over the coming weeks.

Well respected academics like Wilfried Meyer-Viol, Charles Travis and Shalom Lappin, whose jobs were all set to go – the latter writing online that he had been “summoned without warning” by Palmorski and told that his “position would be redundant as of September [2010]” – will remain at KCL. The future of Linguistics and Computational Linguistics appears to have been safeguarded through restructuring.

The college has established a Working Group to explore the future of Palaeography, report back before June 30th, but it is understood to be recommending a “redefined Chair of Palaeography” instead of scrapping the post altogether.

American Studies will still be integrated into the English department, and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies will merge as planned with Spanish and Spanish-American Studies on August 1^st 2010.

KCL Principal Rick Trainor signed a letter in February the Observer calling for adequate funding for Arts and Humanities, which are under threat nationwide, partly due to a government emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects. Middlesex University is currently facing protests against its announcement that it would close its Philosophy Department.

The climb-down of King’s management on compulsory redundancies in Arts and Humanities emulated both Sussex and Kent universities, were a string of job losses were prevented by joint student-staff campaigns.

Unionised UCL staff voted in favour of strike action – to be held on Wednesday May 5th – over a dispute about funding cuts and job losses.

Staff also voted to hold ‘action short of a strike’ from the 6th May; this means they may not mark exam papers, although examinations themselves will not be disrupted.

Forty-five per cent of UCL staff who are members of the University and College Union (UCU) turned out for the ballot; 64% of those were in favour of action short of a strike and 61% were in favour of full strike action. According to a UCL spokesman, less than 10% of UCL staff voted.

Following the ballot, UCL staff held a general meeting and voted to hold the strike on 5th May and to take action short of a strike from the 6th onwards; 56 of those present were in favour, none were against and four abstained. However, staff who have ‘direct and unavoidable responsibilities for exams’ on the 5th May will not be part of in the strike.

UCL staff will be joining colleagues from King’s College London (KCL) who will also be on strike on May 5th, following a previous picket on March 30th. Westminster University and University of Arts London are also likely to see similar actions on the same day in an attempt to put higher education in the debate before the general election.

The action following the strike will include a boycott of out-of-hours working, absence cover, staff appraisals and – more controversially – of examination marking. There is a possibility that prolonged action could impact on graduation dates, although the action would have to continue into June and disrupt the Board of Examiners’ meeting for this to happen.

Sean Wallis, UCU branch secretary at UCL, said that the ballot result “reflects the seriousness of the matter” but hopes that it will not come to a strike; “We are open to discussion at any point and believe our demands are eminently reasonable and easily obtainable”. However, the increase in UCL’s funding from HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council of England) has, in his eyes, undermined UCL’s financial rationale for the cuts; “These are cuts of choice, not necessity, and management could end the dispute tomorrow”.

The UCL Students Union passed a motion in February to support UCL staff ‘defending their jobs’, but some UCL students oppose strike action. A Facebook group entitled ‘UCL students against 3rd term strike action’ has obtained 651 members since its inception on March 18th. Mandy Smith, co-founder of the group and UCL Democracy and Engagement Officer-elect, feels that “while those that put forward the motion at the AGM feel they were explicit, I certainly didn’t feel that third term strike action was explained and judging by the response neither did the majority of students.”

She added that students were being used as “political pawns.”

A UCU motion was also passed to ‘defend library staff’ with all present voting in favour. A consultative document proposes a 6% cut in library services, particularly those related to UCL’s special collections. Fred Beam, the presidential librarian who proposed the motion, warns that this move “focuses on what [UCL] believes are weak areas in the library” and that it would put UCL at a serious disadvantage compared to other major universities who maintain similar collections.