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issue 75

12 May 2011

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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.

Please delete as soon as possible after receipt. Back issues and subscription details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext.

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CONTENTS: Editorial, news in brief, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, senate report, Wollongong, conspiracy theories, how others see us, threesomes, square things, letters

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EDITORIAL

Not so much an editorial, perhaps, more a list of several matters that provoke concern. The first is, obviously and inescapably, the imminent departure of the VC. The University has, unlikely as it may seem, been taken by surprise. Nine months' notice of this event may seem like a long time, but in terms of recruiting a new VC it apparently isn't.  The drive to reduce democracy whenever possible which has increasingly become part of the University's attitude to its own rules is again highlighted by the paper to Senate attempting to change the method of assembling the search committee.  (See Senate report below, for some evidence of Senate apparently rediscovering at least one vertebra of its mislaid backbone.) Whatever method is eventually decided upon, it is highly unlikely that a candidate of suitable standing will be found by January, which will mean an interregnum and an acting VC, with all the instabilities and uncertainties that such a situation will entail, particularly given the government's reforms and the number of submerged academic-related issues, for example about the management of undergraduate and postgraduate studies, which are likely to come to the fore in the near future. The VC's rapid departure also leaves the 94 Group adrift and in need of a new chairman, at a time when the government has made an unprecedented mess of its higher education policy and needs all the specialist guidance and common sense feedback it can get.  A further concern is the departure of the Head of HR; it would be comforting to think that the University might ensure the selection of a person who is prepared to roll up his/her sleeves and engage in active dialogue with real people. Comforting, but unlikely. Then there are the widely-held concerns around the emerging REF trial exercise, particularly if it leads to the kind of action being taken against colleagues in ELC. (This will be discussed in a future issue.) We live, as always, in interesting times.

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NEWS IN BRIEF

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Problems in Malawi: things are worse elsewhere

No matter how much one might moan about the state of academia in the UK, it's worth sparing a thought for those who have it much worse elsewhere. Academics at the University of Malawi, who include Lancaster alumni, currently face extreme problems. In February a political science lecturer was interrogated by police after drawing parallels in class between the political situation in Malawi and Egypt. Since then the lecturers have been on strike and there have been attempts to sack the union leaders and close the university. The protesters in Malawi have gained a court injunction which currently prevents the union leaders being sacked or the university being closed, however the university management is going back to the courts this week to attempt to get the injunction over-turned. There's a petition asking the Malawian authorities to ensure academic freedom and keep the university open that you can sign here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/freeacad/petition.html. You can read more about the events in Malawi here: http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/malawi:-university-chaos-dominates-malawi-media-201104037464.html and http://thechronicleherald.ca/TheNovaScotian/1242315.html.

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Widening Access

After the meeting on 4 May, members of Senate received a paper prepared by the Deputy VC for Council on the University's proposals to the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) for an access agreement. The paper is clearly argued and organised. Parts of it are interesting for the light they shed on Lancaster's 'home' undergraduate population compared with that of other universities.

The proposal is to spend 22.5% of the university's 'additional' fee income on widening access. (The additional income is the £3,000 difference between Lancaster's proposed £9,000 fee and the government's preferred £6,000.)  This will cover the three approaches to widening participation - financial support, outreach and retention, specifically of students from low participation areas. The proposal, as required by OFFA, also gives targets for four indicators of widening participation - the percentage of students from state schools, the percentage from lower socio-economic groups, the percentage from low participation neighbourhoods, and the non-retention percentage of this group. On the first and last of these the proposal is for no change from the current actually achieved figures of 91% and 5.5%; on the second and third small changes are proposed, from 24% to 25%, and from 10% to 11%. The reason why only small changes are deemed possible is that Lancaster, by design or accident, already out-performs the 94 and Russell Groups on all of these indicators, and on the first it out-performs the sector as a whole. Therefore, since, as the paper says, widening participation is not central to Lancaster's 'core mission', there is no point in attempting 'further outperformance'. OFFA will give its verdict on the proposal by 11 July at the latest. An unscientific and anecdotal walk around the University doesn't reveal many mature students, nor many Black or Asian faces, so it seems that the performance indicators have done well by us. Of course, we shouldn't take this as reason to do nothing; as we know from league tables, performance indicators can easily be changed.

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DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM, AND ALL THAT

Subscribers will be aware that the new revamped Waterside building near George Fox is to be known as 'The Charles Carter Building', named after the university's first Vice Chancellor.  What those in charge of naming such buildings may not be aware of is that when Charles Carter resigned his position in the 1970s and the University offered to name a building after him in grateful tribute, his strong Quaker principles meant that he turned the offer down flat.  He regarded such things as immodest nonsense. 

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SENATE REPORT

Senate met on 4 May, briefly, and with the exception of one item of business, uneventfully.

Members heard the Vice-Chancellor report on the university's letter from HEFCE about funding for the coming year - broadly as expected, with a 6.8% reduction in the allocation for teaching and research. The longer-term capital allocation (for 2012-15) was lower than expected - around £6 million, compared with £20 million for the previous three years. Other reports were on the university's access agreement with the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), which explains what the university will do by way of widening participation to justify its £9,000 undergraduate fee, on the establishment of the Confucius Institute, which will teach Chinese language courses from Michaelmas 2011, on E-Prints, of which Lancaster's repository is the fourth largest in the UK, and the 46th largest in the world, and on the new points-based immigration rules as they affect students. A case was reported of one British university which has had its Highly Trusted Sponsor status suspended, because its overseas nursing students were judged to be doing too much nursing and too little studying.

The first discussion item was on progress in the joint venture with the Guangdong Foreign Studies University, about which members had previously expressed concerns related to academic freedom for staff and students. While various possibilities were noted of derailment of these plans - which, all being well, will see the first students being registered in October 2013 - the government's wish to restrict immigration was, members were assured, not among these threats, since the targets of the immigration restrictions are institutions considerably less prestigious than Lancaster or Guangdong.

The item that occasioned most discussion was the proposal to appoint a search committee to find a replacement for Professor Wellings. The news of his departure was dealt with in a perfunctory, perhaps embarrassed, way by Fiona Aiken, who offered congratulations on his appointment to Wollongong and expressed regret at his resignation from Lancaster. No doubt a future Senate will find a way of conveying these sentiments more fully and collectively. The proposal was that the search committee should have a majority of Council members and that Senate representation should be decided by the Pro-Chancellor and University Secretary in consultation with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and PVCs. The post would be advertised, but head-hunters would also be appointed.

Professor Diggle said that the committee which had searched for a replacement for Bill Ritchie had decided to do without head-hunters, and that last time Senate had been allowed to elect its representatives. Fiona Aiken said, in effect, that things had moved on since then, that everybody else used head-hunters, and that an election would take too much time. Chris Thrush, the outgoing Director of Human Resources, asked whether the procedure was to be based on advertised selection or a search. He thought the proposed arrangement was ambiguous and that the University risked paying head-hunters a lot without being clear what they would be doing. Fiona Aiken rejected this (presumably expert) opinion. Joe Thornberry proposed an amendment to the proposal which would allow for the Senate representatives to be elected by members of the Senate. In a rare case of Senate's voting to keep rather than relinquish its authority, the amendment was passed. Subsequently Senate members were given a very tight deadline for nominations to the search committee, so it is to be hoped that enough of them respond quickly, and so show that a democratic approach is practicable.

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WOLLONGONG, WHERE AND WHAT?

subtext researches matters like this so that you don't have to, but many readers may well have taken the modest trouble to find out where the university is that has attracted Professor Wellings as a suitable place for his next career move. They will have found that Wollongong is by the sea south of Sydney in the Ilawarra region of New South Wales, not far from Coniston. Its tourism webpage describes it as the 'gateway to the south' and 'one of Australia's most liveable regional cities'. It has a population of just under 300,000. Its University has around 26,000 students, distributed across nine faculties (too many, surely?), not including Sydney Business School and a Graduate School of Medicine.  A colleague suggests that it has a similar relationship to the (very well-known) Sydney University as the University of Central Lancashire has to our own establishment.

Judging by its website, the University of Wollongong is very pleased that Professor Wellings is to be its next Vice-Chancellor, the fourth since its independence from the University of New South Wales in 1975. And judging by his photo on the site, Professor Wellings is very pleased about it too. We look forward to learning more about what is so good about Wollongong, or so bad about Lancaster. It can't just be that the surfing is apparently better in Wollongong than in Morecambe.

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CONSPIRACY THEORIES

There was a nice rumour running around a couple of months ago that the sudden closure of the underpass and the delay in the renovations was due to the discovery of something unanticipated by the builders.  This was, apparently and depending to whom you spoke, due to any one of a number of reasons, amongst which were; badly corroded concrete supports ('The Square is about to collapse into the underpass'); a mistake in the load-bearing calculations ('No-one noticed that the new paving-stones in the Square are heavier than the old ones'); a bulldozer, (or dumper truck, or tractor) in the foundations ('They constructed the Square around it and only noticed when it was too late'); and a Native American burial ground discovered directly beneath Greggs which was causing the temperature of their cheese and onion pasties to approach that of the core of the sun. subtext is, as always, happy to explode such theories whenever possible.  We are reassured that the concrete supports are no more or less corroded than one would expect, that the load-bearing calculations were spot-on and that, as one would expect, there is a large margin of error anyway. The story of the truck left in the foundations is, apparently, one that is common to many new universities but has never been proven. As to the Native American burial ground, we of course made that up, but nevertheless it may be true; at the very least, the temperature of Greggs cheese and onion pasties remains an unexplained secret.

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HOW OTHERS SEE US...

A Lancaster colleague was in Tunisia recently, at the tail end of the recent disturbances.  At the airport, while waiting for his flight, he struck up a conversation with a Tunisian man. Our colleague made congratulatory noises about the changes that were taking place and offered his good wishes for the future of the country. The Tunisian accepted these with a good grace, and then asked where our colleague was from. 'England', he replied. The Tunisian's brow furrowed, and he asked in concerned tones mixed with disbelief, 'England?  Is it really true that they're going to start charging for education there?'

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THREESOMES

In a previous issue we commented - fairly impolitely - on the branding of the new Cafe 2010 with various three-word slogans.  The penetrative power of such mockery is demonstrated by the fact that the slogan TALK LAUGH CHILL, which hitherto was only written on the menus, is now printed on the wall in letters several feet high.  It seems that the Catering Dept not only think that some people need instructions on the purpose of a cafe, but that they need to be able to read them from a great distance.

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MORE THREESOMES

We asked for suggestions as to other areas of the University where such verbal triptychs might be applied.  A suggestion was received for ISS; LOG-IN CRASH DESPAIR.  Other suggestions welcomed.

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SQUARE THINGS

As the refurbishment of Alexandra Square isn't yet complete, it seems a touch unfair to start criticising it already.  But hey, what the heck. (We'll do a proper appreciation of it when it's done. Let's be generous. The slope running across the steps is attractive. Although it means that wheelchair users will still get wet.)  The thing that strikes one immediately on entering the Square is the Tardis made of smoky green glass near the library entrance. Very mysterious.  It looks like it's been stolen from inside the Lloyds building in London, plonked down and left there. The only other smoky green glass anywhere nearby is in the strips that run across the floor Square. It has been suggested that these are the landing lights for the helicopter which will take the VC to his new destination in December, in which case we can only hope that they have been correctly aligned.  On a wider issue, we note with something less than rabid enthusiasm that the architects employed over the last 10 years by the University to bring it to the cutting edge of modern building technology have looked at five thousand years of construction aesthetics and come up with...The Box. Boxes are proliferating everywhere. The new LEC building? A box. The new LICA building? A pale green box. The new sports centre?  A shiny black box. InfoLab? A green and bronze pointy box of, let it be said loudly and clearly, quite surpassing ugliness. The spanking-new Charles Carter (sic, see above) Building...oh yes, it's a box too. With big windows.  Come on, we accept that these are primarily functional buildings, we aren't asking for flying buttresses, Gaudi-esque curves and Baroque trompe d'oeil, but maybe a bit of variety, eh?

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LETTERS

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(Re: Article in subtext 74 on 'Mystery Yellow Sayings')

Not sure if your 'But who put them there and why?' question was rhetorical but the answers are:

who? -  Laura Wood, Chaplaincy Intern, whose idea it was, implemented by a team of chaplaincy art-activists

why? - to be uplifting and to make people think - so it seems they succeeded.

If you really did like them, I'm sure Laura would be delighted to be told by your good selves.

Cheers,

Lisa Whistlecroft

(We did.  Well done Laura. - Eds)

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(Re: Beer Fest)

'subtexters reflected that it is possible in the windy isolation of Bailrigg to forget that Lancaster is a substantial town with, on this evidence, a thriving and active civil society.'

Yeah (hic), we love you too, mate ;-)

love

Chris Satori, Editor, Virtual Lancaster

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The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: Rachel Cooper (PPR), George Green, Gavin Hyman, David Smith, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Martin Widden.

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