issue 52

6 May 2009

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'Truth: lies open to all'

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Every fortnight during term-time.

All editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors [at] lancaster.ac.uk.

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CONTENTS: editorial, news in brief, appreciation - Jacqueline Whiteside, senate report, more fire, even more fire, doors, urban myth, letters.

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EDITORIAL

Subscribers will have received a bonus newsflash two weeks ago, containing a one-page digest of the issues facing Senate the next day, and giving a subtext perspective on them. The decision to send out the newsflash - which from feedback received seems to have been welcomed - was the outcome of much warehouse deliberation, and done because we felt the questions facing Senate were sufficiently significant to make a commentary on them important. Whatever the merits of the proposed Redundancy Committee or changes to Statute 20 might be thought to be, there is a sense that we are at a real cross-roads in the University's history. At such times, even more than usual, those who lead us have a responsibility to wield their authority with the clarity and self-evident integrity that will assure those potentially most affected that both their personal long-term interests, and the values and objectives of the institution, are being safeguarded. Equally, it requires everyone else involved in the process of decision-making, in whatever capacity, to behave responsibly and maturely, and to subject all proposals to the sort of scrutiny that ensures the final decision, whatever its complexion, can truly be said to represent a system that works well and is accepted as doing so. At the best, those in authority present resolutions in good faith, they are robustly scrutinised, and an informed consensus is reached.

Does the above description fit the position the Senate reached last week, and which is reported on below? Rather than satisfaction at a job well done, it is unhappily more sorrow than satisfaction that appears to be the appropriate response, with missed opportunities on all sides. The Vice-Chancellor had an opportunity to be nimble-footed in relations with UCU, but instead chose to adopt the bludgeon rather than the rapier. Council could have elected to follow the spirit of the University Charter, Statutes and Ordinances in respect of its relationship with Senate, but chose to be partisan and to act against the spirit if not the letter of the University Constitution, and at a stroke radically to change the relationship between the governing bodies of the University. Senate and its members could have chosen to behave like a mature academic governing body; instead, many onlookers will feel that future members of the University will look back on the events of the past weeks and say that, with a few notable exceptions, Senate was at best quiescent and at worst delinquent in its responsibilities.

Both the success of the RAE and the economic crisis in different ways presented an opportunity for all involved with the University to pull together in hard times. This opportunity has, it seems, been spurned. Instead of opportunity taken we see a raft of political capital that has been squandered. Instead of unity there is counter-productive aggression, flouting of a partner body's views, a broadly pusillanimous Senate (with honourable exceptions), and increasing disillusionment amongst ill-informed, unconsulted and frightened staff. O tempora, o mores.

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NEWS IN BRIEF

SHAM: new acting Dean

It is understood that the current PVC for Research, Trevor McMillan, is to take over as acting Dean of the School and Health and Medicine during Tony Gatrell's absence on long term sick leave. subtext joins others in wishing Tony well for a speedy recovery.

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HR Director

It was announced in early April that the current Director of Human Resources, Val Walshe, would be leaving the University 'to pursue new career opportunities', (see issue 50). subtext wishes her well in whatever these might be. She is likely to depart at the end of July at which point a new Divisional Director of HR will be appointed. As one might expect, internal maneuvering to succeed her already appears to be underway, though it is of course very possible that a new appointment will be made from outside the University and possibly the HE sector. The secretive HR Committee is likely to be involved in the appointment, which should give all of us cause for concern. Whoever takes up the post will face a particularly difficult and challenging time. Relationships with campus unions seem to have deteriorated and much of the so-called 'People Strategy' appears as empty rhetoric though cynics might say it always was. subtext will be following developments closely.

Newsflash - the post of Director of HR was advertised nationally this week.

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Campus disturbance

April 6 saw the transfer of the remaining college bars to central control under the management of the Commercial Director. The start of term brought an instructive vignette of what the future might hold for college bars as they are pushed in the direction of external revenue generating activities. Despite it being the 'quiet period' within college residences, a private wedding reception was booked into Pendle College Bar for Saturday 18th April. Unfortunately, the event deteriorated into a brawl by the end of the evening. Porters were apparently told not to intervene and the police were called. Six police vehicles and ten officers attended to deal with the large number of guests who were running around the college, fighting, shouting obscenities and relieving themselves in the doorways to the residences. We hasten to add that no students were involved: indeed, they had been banned from their own premises for the evening. It is understood that no arrests were made, but the police remained until the remaining guests had left. One would hope that questions will be asked as to how and why such an incident occurred. The University Secretary has delegated authority from Council to exercise responsibility for all regulated space operated by the University under its Premises Licence and must rightly be concerned at what happened. Action will presumably be taken, both to deal with what happened and to prevent recurrences in the future.

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Fire down below (well, Pendle)

The first Saturday of the new term also saw a fire on campus at Pendle College. It must have been a lively evening in that part of campus. The blaze is believed to have been started by a discarded barbeque placed in one of the large refuse bins and quickly spread to others. Fortunately, no one was hurt though some twenty four rooms were said to be damaged by smoke. subtext understands that the Disaster Recovery Co-ordinator was present at the incident (yes, we do have someone occupying that role), though quite why and to what effect is not known. More interesting questions worthy of consideration are why advice on the use of metal rather than highly inflammable plastic bins does not appear to have been acted upon across campus and why the location of such refuse areas close to accommodation appears to be permitted.

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Earth Tremor

Campus felt the effects of an earth tremor last Tuesday morning. The epicentre was Ulverston in Cumbria and it measured 3.7 on the Richter Scale. No damage has been reported but the Director of Estate Management was apparently spotted, having left his office with some speed, gazing up at the newly refurbished University House. Does he know something we don't?

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APPRECIATION - JACQUELINE WHITESIDE

subtext was sorry to hear of the recent announcement of the Librarian's early retirement on medical grounds later this year. Jacqueline has been a powerful friend to many good causes at Lancaster over the last fifteen years, and will be much missed.

Jacqueline's arrival coincided closely with the later stages of planning for the Library Extension and, thanks to her adroit handling of a difficult situation, the project did not fall into the state of unmanageable anarchy that seemed to threaten at the time. She and her colleagues have made excellent use of the additional space and continue to develop and update a student-orientated service that takes a lot of the stress out of students' academic coursework and examination revision. The inclusion of the Rare Book Archive also provided an extremely helpful bargaining counter in securing the loan the Hesketh materials for Lancaster. It is a great and lasting pity that despite her best efforts, Phase 3 of the Library appears to be as distant as it ever was.

Her many other roles have variously included line management responsibility for the Ruskin Library and actively supporting both its scholarly output and its public face as an arts provider to the general public, head of the Careers Service while it faced the tensions of high profile league tables as against the realities of employment in the North West, the Directorship of the Centre for North West Regional Studies as it extended both its publication record and its outreach to the region, and an active chair and participant in the activities of the Office for the Associated Institutions. She also helped to shape a range of key policies for the university, not least the Staff Charter.

Jacqueline combines a fierce dedication to principle and procedure, combined with a loyalty and warmth to her staff and colleagues that brings out the best in them, confident that she will always give them public support. She has made important contributions to strategic planning, to governance, to the quality assurance of the university's collaborative provision, and to the furtherance of strong channels of communication and information, while also remaining poised, elegant and efficient. Her numerous friends across the university wish her well as she plans the next stage of her career.

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SENATE REPORT

22 April's Senate was one laden with controversial issues. Its business was set against the background of Alistair Darling's budget, which some senators, gluttons for punishment and share portfolios to hand, were watching eagle-eyed on their laptops at the same time as the meeting was being held. Moreover, the meeting was overshadowed by Council's recent decision to ignore Senate's wishes on redundancy as expressed at its February meeting.

The first item of information, delivered by the VC, related to the HEFCE Grant Letter. The headline news is that Lancaster has received an increase in funding of 3.39%. On the down-side, however, the sector average appears to have been nearer 4.1%. You may record that on your pools card, therefore, as a score-draw.

The University Secretary then proceeded to inform Senate about the new points-based immigration system. Originally this proposal, from the Home Office, had required the University to report students from outside the UK/EU to the immigration authorities if the student was absent for more than ten consecutive days. Given that this was an inappropriate model in the university sector the proposal has been altered to cover missing ten consecutive appointments (for example supervisions, seminars, and tutorials). Despite this being controversial for ideological reasons, the University Secretary informed Senate that the University is legally obliged to carry out this monitoring and that, thankfully, our systems are already able to cope with the requirements of the legislation. Turing once more to your pool card, you may record that score as Home Office Wanderers 1 - Rest of the World All-Stars 0.

Feedback from the QAA institutional audit was brief, as was the (nevertheless fulsome) praise for the Department of Accounting and Finance's successful Periodic Quality Review. The rolling schedule of Senate business elicited no comment (though whose paying attention will have noticed that a number of proposals have now dropped off this year's schedule - perhaps some diligent Senator will one day ask why).

To finish off the information items a question on notice to the Vice-Chancellor, put by Mr. Jo Hardman of Graduate College, was answered by the PVC for the Student Experience, Professor Mandy Chetwynd. The question asked what provisions are available to facilitate employment and integration of overseas PGR students. A fairly standard answer, running through the usual suspects of CEEC, student support, and Graduate College came back - though a working party was promised on the subject.

Just before Senators came out for the second-half the VC noted, under any other business, that the University Librarian, Jacqueline Whiteside, will be retiring on medical grounds. (See also the tribute to her above.) The VC spoke warmly of her valuable contribution to the University during her period of office.

The first substantive item of Senate was the proposal by the Vice-Chancellor that Senate comment on the strategic plan for 2009-2015. Not much by way of comment was made, however. One Senator asked if the link between increasing the surplus to 5% and decreasing the staff cost ratio to 60% of income should worry staff (apparently it should not). Another Senator helpfully pointed out a typo. A heated debate between Mr. Joe Thornberry and the VC was more useful - when the former asked if it was wise to be pressing ahead with increasing the surplus in what were supposed to be difficult economic times both nationally and, indeed, globally. Despite the apparently reasonable nature of this question the VC insisted that it was a deliberate scare-mongering tactic, and the Director of Finance assured Senate that it would be best to retain the overall 'shape' of the institution by pressing ahead with the surplus than to reduce it because of economic difficulties. Senators did not press this point further. It felt rather like a bad undergraduate seminar when the students haven't read the set text and are all waiting for someone else to speak. Mark the result down as an easy 2 goal win to Management Utd in a game where the home team, to use the vernacular, 'had it all to do, but failed to turn up'.

The next item, redundancy procedures, led naturally from the previous item. Before the item was spoken to, one Senator asked if the debate was appropriate under the Senate constitution, given that Senate had already given its opinion on this issue at its last meeting. The Vice-Chancellor informed Senate that, as this proposal was not to note the establishment of a redundancy committee but rather now to comment on its procedures given that one had been set-up, the motion was in order. The University Secretary informed Senate that Council had decided to press ahead with establishing a Redundancy Committee. This was necessary for reasons outlined in the previous Senate, and made all the more pressing by the inability of the university to repeal Statute 20 until the spring of 2010. One Senator asked why, if the problem of moving ahead with new employment procedures had been a lack of agreement with the campus unions, the University was not seeking to re-enter negotiations with them. The Vice-Chancellor responded that a further meeting with the unions had been tabled for the near-future and that consultations over Statute 20 were on-going.

At last, the home team bestirred themselves into life. Mr. Joe Thornberry made again some of the points made in the last Senate by himself and Dr. Chris Grocott, when the two of them moved a motion asking Council to re-consider the decision to establish a Redundancy Committee. Mr. Thornberry then moved that the Senate re-affirm its desire that the Council re-consider, but the Vice-Chancellor ruled this out of order as Senate had already passed such a motion at its last meeting. Mr. Thornberry then put an amendment that Senate refuse to nominate anyone to the redundancy committee. Obviously shaken, the VC asked Ms. Fiona Aiken if this was in order - it was. Somewhat piqued the VC then declared the proposal 'silly' and reported that if it were passed the university would be bankrupt in 15 months. (If this claim is true, then it is surely a great deal more than 'silly'; if it is untrue then one might think that the scare-mongering is actually flowing in the opposite direction.) Mr. Thornberry pressed ahead and asked if he had a Senator to second the motion and Dr. Grocott indicated that he would. At this point the students' union president, Mr. Michael Payne, asked if it was in order for the VC to chair the item given that he had already expressed an opinion on the amendment. The University Secretary assured Senate that it was in order. In a somewhat confusing fog of constitutional shenanigans the VC declared that Senate would have to vote on whether or not it wished to vote on the amendment. By this method, and some might think rather conveniently, Mr. Thornberry and Dr. Grocott were prevented from speaking to the motion, whilst the VC had already been able to condemn it. In a very tense vote 22 senators declared themselves willing to hear the motion but 33 were not prepared to even entertain it. Clearly relieved, top-table moved the item on. You may note this on your pool card as Management United 3 - Worker's Villa 1, with the VC scoring a hat-trick and the University Secretary credited with several assists. Nevertheless, the Player of the Month competition (otherwise known as the Senator of the Month award) goes jointly to Thornberry and Grocott for their sterling (sorry, 'silly' and 'scare-mongering') performance.

The next item, proposals to remove elected elements from appointment panels, went through with very little controversy. The only concession granted was that the University Secretary said that it would be permissible for colleges to elect members to search committees for Principals as long as the election was held before nominations were opened.

Finally, a brief item on the Princess Sumaya University of Technology brings us to the spot-the-ball competition. One member of Senate asked if students registered for Lancaster degrees at Princess Sumaya would be counted as part of Lancaster's student numbers. The Deputy Vice-Chancellor informed Senate that they would. A nervous Paul Graves had to correct Professor McKinley and inform him that they did not. If you look at your goal-mouth picture now you will see clearly the Deputy VC, wearing the number 1 shirt, dropping the ball just as Paul Graves (No. 4) clears it off the line. This clip may be seen on YouTube and has so far received several thousand hits.

To cheer up the assembled members of Senate, the VC then announced that he had been given an update on the budget via his Blackberry and that the budget for DIUS was to be cut by a projected £400 million. 'Tough times ahead' Senators were told. 'We're all doomed,' they replied in unison, and staggered back to their offices to check the dictionary definition of words like 'permanent', 'indefinite' and 'contract'.

Manager of the Month quite clearly goes to the VC whose Ferguson-esque aggression unsettled his opponents in this Senate. With the football season over, Senators may now wonder where they will find their entertainment. Worry not - footy season may have ended, but the hunting season is now well and truly open.

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MORE FIRE

Subscribers who live on campus will be familiar with the sight of the splendid Lancashire Fire Brigade responding to call-outs in residence blocks. We don't have an exact figure for annual call-outs across campus (though the figure could no doubt be procured) but a rough extrapolation from figures that we do have suggests that, in the last year, fire alarms in campus residences were activated approximately 700 times. Most, though not all, activations are attended by the fire brigade. Let's be conservative, say 500 attendances a year, over 52 weeks, that's around ten a week or twice a day most days. There are several aspects of this that interest us.

The first is the obvious question; is everything being done to make sure that these call-outs are necessary and justified? The short answer appears to be 'No'. The fire alarms installed in campus residences (both old and new) are, in accordance with fire brigade guidance, sensitive to both heat and smoke. So far, so sensible. Unfortunately, the alarms are not, we understand, exactly top of the range, and are therefore prone to being activated by anything less pure than a fresh breeze coming off Skiddaw. For instance, they can be - and frequently have been - triggered by deodorants, hairspray, steam from showers, cigarette smoke, cooking fumes, dust, and, on more than one occasion, the warmth generated by someone drying their hair. Obviously no-one is happy about this, but one of the characteristics of cheaper alarms is that they can't be adjusted to tolerate different conditions. (Although we're sure that everyone will be delighted to be informed that Lancaster students are using lots of deodorant.)

So. These figures suggest that only somewhere between 10-20% of fire service attendances to the University are in response to an event actually involving a fire. This seems environmentally criminal, and a huge waste of time and resources. And there is another, rather more serious issue. A College Principal from a few years ago remembers talking to a fire officer who was attending the day's third University call-out that had turned out to be yet another case of students setting off alarms for a prank. The fire officer saw such hoaxes as part of the job, but he made a judicious point. One day, he said, there will be a serious fire somewhere nearby, and people will die because the fire engines and officers who might have been able to save them did not get there in time because they were attending a hoax call at the University. What, the officer asked, did we think the local papers would make of that story?

Hoax call-outs are mercifully few these days, but the point is the same. What do we think local reaction would be to the suggestion that people in Lancaster are potentially being put at risk because the University has installed fire alarms that can't tell the difference between a real fire and The Lynx Effect?

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EVEN MORE FIRE

We have been contacted by several subscribers concerning a recent fire warning. Apparently on one of the particularly sunny days last week someone left a glass paperweight sitting on top of a pile of papers on a windowsill, causing the papers to start to smoulder. One subtext subscriber predicted that this phenomenon would be seen as a challenge by many in the University, provoking a rash of magnifying-glass related incidents and a boom in ugly paperweight sales in local shops. It was also suggested, entirely in a spirit of fun we do not doubt, that some office drones might see this as an - admittedly somewhat drastic - opportunity to create the paper-free office. As our subscriber put it, 'certainly saves on filing ...'

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SOMETIMES, THIS STUFF JUST WRITES ITSELF ...

Subscribers may be aware of The Onion, the US satirical journal. (If not, it's worth a Google.) A while back they ran a spoof of the front cover of The Times on the day the Titanic went down. Over a picture of the stricken ship they ran the banner headline 'World's Largest Metaphor Hits Iceberg'. We can't quite compete with that, but several subscribers contacted us in April 8th this year to suggest that an email sent that day to all University House staff offered at least some room for ironic analogy. The email warned staff that there was a fault with the doors throughout University House. Every one of them was locked, and no-one could get in or out.

Doors locking themselves. And now there's Swine Fever. And then, on Tuesday there was an earthquake, 3.7 on the Richter Scale, apparently. So, pestilence, famine, disruption ... Anyone seeing a pattern here?

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URBAN MYTH

subtext subscribers may remember the occasion a few years ago when, the National Union of Students ran a 'Colleges Top Totty' competition. For those of you who may have been away, this took place at the peak of 'lad-mag' popularity, a phenomenon now apparently and mercifully waning. (A bit of background may be called for here - 'Totty', our dictionary informs us, may perhaps come from the Romany 'taati', meaning a warm woman. 'Totty' was also a term used by Chaucer to indicate someone dizzy and unsteady on their feet, hence inebriated. We leave it to you to decide if there is any connection to either of these possible derivations leading to the modern sense of the word, which is a term referring to persons possessed of physical characteristics generally deemed attractive according to the prevalent aesthetic norms of the culture and period.) It is perhaps worth mentioning that the modern term is not necessarily solely applied to women, although the competition run by the NUS was not, we think, open to male entrants on this occasion.

Anyway. The story goes that the NUS set up a website to record voting online. Someone wishing to record their opinion that the female students at a given institution were, in that person's considered opinion, collectively and individually unusually close in physical appearance to those currently prevalent culturally accepted characteristics denoting attractiveness, would log on and click on a button to vote. Guess who got most clicks? Yup, Lancaster. Now, subtext has no opinion at all on the attractiveness or otherwise of anyone, but apparently Lancaster's victory had less to do with any cultural construct or indeed the willingness of voters to support Lancaster, and much more to do with the ingenuity of some highly IT-literate members of the institution, who wrote a computer program which would access the NUS website every few seconds and vote for Lancaster. This program was loaded onto every available computer in every computer lab on campus and left to run for a week. Unsurprisingly Lancaster won at a landslide.

And, of course, in such things there is always an irony somewhere. The NUS couldn't get too upset at this rather clever piece of blatant gerrymandering, because when some observers had earlier questioned the wisdom and appropriateness of such a competition, the NUS had huffed that they 'shouldn't take it so seriously, it doesn't mean anything, no-one minds, it's just a bit of harmless fun', and so on. Hoist, petard, etc.

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LETTERS

Dear subtext,

Just read the item in subtext 51 about the re-opening of the Storey Institute and the feature of the `matching busts' of Victoria and Albert. You remark that these are unusual, in that Albert is depicted 'in his prime' just before his death in 1861, whilst Victoria is shown 'as she was 40 years later'. You suggest that she was dreaming of him. A nice idea but, as Victoria died on 22 January 1901, she wouldn't have had much opportunity for dreaming of her Albert 40 years after his death (although she undoubtedly crammed in a lot of such dreaming in the 40 years that intervened between his death and her own).

Perhaps the intention of the sculptor or his/her patron was to capture a likeness of each of these royal personage in their final moments on this earth, placed 'high up' in the gallery as depicts their station on this mortal plane but awaiting their imminent elevation to an even Higher Place? Perhaps the suggestion was that Albert, the faithful consort, waited patiently for his wife and queen to `catch up' so they could ascend together? Is it possible, even, that the busts were created from the death masks of the happy couple? There's a research project in there somewhere for someone, I'm sure.

Robbie Smith, IEU/Independent Studies

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Dear subtext,

In response to Mike Pidd's letter, I too was intrigued by the new sports centre's decentralised location, until I realised that it was actually a quite ingenious method of reducing the cost of the facility. By walking down the hill and back again, we'll already be achieving our half an hour of moderate exercise, meaning the sports centre will not actually need any equipment inside.

In the light of this, I'd propose that walls and roofs are also an unnecessary expenditure. A wooden post in the ground near the pavilion to which everyone would be encouraged to walk would probably suffice!

Hope this clears things up a bit.

Nick Taylor, C29 InfoLab21

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Dear subtext,

Partly in reference to your previously published letter on the new sports centre, and also concerned about the new Science Park development, I feel that both University and council planners are happily oblivious to the town's inclement weather. I had occasion, one evening a few weeks since, to cross the water-swept wastes of County 'piazza', and cannot imagine the journey to either the new sports centre or the proposed science park to be one requiring lesser stamina (not to mention professional arctic exploration equipment). Unless there are James Bond villain-style plans afoot for a monorail transport system.

Also on an environmental note, a colleague in ISS has pointed out that their new building being constructed near Pendle will be using extensive cooling systems to deal with heat from its necessary equipment, which could happily be displaced into a nearby swimming pool or other facility - why was this not considered in planning the new sports site? It seems planning committees are doomed to a lack of common sense or engineering expertise!

Regards,

Laura Mitchell, Management School.

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Dear subtext,

The following is part of a recent message calling for nominations for honorary degrees:

'The Honorary Degrees Committee welcomes the nomination of candidates with reputations of distinction in their particular fields, preferably related to an area of the University's work, such as environmental research or media and communications, among others. The Committee anticipates a good pool of female and international candidates.'

I was thinking of nominating a male UK candidate, who most certainly meets the first criterion, but there then seems to be a certain amount of exclusivity in the criteria which follow, giving me pause for thought. Instead, I think it would have been more reassuring to see it worded, necessarily and sufficiently, as follows:

'The Honorary Degrees Committee welcomes the nomination of candidates with reputations of distinction in their particular fields, preferably related to an area of the University's work.'

Alan Waters, Linguistics

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The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: George Green, Gavin Hyman, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Alan Whitaker.