Students at Sheffield University staged a sit-in of their student union building recently over anger at the rumours that the university could follow others in raising its tuition fees to £9,000 a year from September 2012.
Students who had occupied two university buildings at the end of last year reorganised themselves. They occupied a section of the student union building outside a meeting of executives and ‘community groups with interest in the university’ that, according to one security guard, was ‘politically sensitive’.
The issue of cuts and rising fees would have undoubtedly been discussed and the 30 students wanted their opposition to be heard. The demonstrating students were met with brutal force from security staff, with one student being thrown across the corridor and another with cuts and bruising to his arm.
Student union bureaucrats tried to quash the protest by insisting that fees and cuts were not being discussed in the meeting and that what was being discussed was none of our concern.
Anti-cuts campaigners at Sheffield will continue to build the anti-cuts movement and will demonstrate outside the Lib Dem conference on 11-12 March and will protest in solidarity with the lecturers’ union, UCU, when it takes strike action later this month.
