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subtext | Truth: lies open to all Issue 160 - ‘Disorder in the house’ 16/03/2017 ***************************************************** Fortnightly during term time. Letters, contributions, & comments: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk Back issues & subscription details: www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext In this issue: editorial; come on you reds; limbering up for the big one; chinese whispers; harassment; democracy in action; overheard at Lancaster; as i wordled lonely as a cloud; lords battle wisely; eiderdowns; saving this sort of thing; (lots of)letters. ***************************************************** EDITORIAL It is now Day 274 since Senate was first informed of the potential strategic partnership with the Class of 92 – the ‘Football University’, reported in subtext 158 – and the prohibition on discussion outside Senate is still in place. Following the recent revelations in the press one would have thought that, with the cat now out of the bag, the gag would be relaxed. At the very least, we might have expected that it would have been challenged at last week’s Senate meeting. Not a bit of it. There was no mention of the partnership, the press speculation, the ‘commercial in confidence’ gag – nothing. This raises the serious question of whether Senate is able, or indeed willing, to carry out its constitutional responsibilities. Senators operate as representatives, not delegates, and cannot be mandated by their constituencies, but for the system to work effectively they need to be aware of the views of those they represent. This makes for better decision making on the big issues. But if deans are prevented from discussing an issue with their faculty, heads of department with their staff, college principals with their syndicates and LUSU officers with their members, how can informed decisions be made? What is particularly galling is the fact that a lot of information is already out in the public arena and is being widely discussed, particularly in Manchester. But at Lancaster, where open, vigorous debate should be part of our DNA, there has been no public discussion whatsoever. Older subtext readers may have a sense of déjà vu as they see this story unfold. We have been here before, twenty years ago. Then, it was the actions of an impatient and dictatorial vice-chancellor obsessed with trying to gain Lancaster a place at the academic top table, senior administrators entranced by their imagined business acumen, and a cowed and supine Senate, that brought Lancaster University to the brink of bankruptcy. In the post-crisis ‘lessons to be learned’ inquest, the failure of Senate to exercise proper scrutiny was highlighted as a key factor in bringing about that near-disaster. It is often unwise to look to the past for parallels to contemporary situations but, when we contemplate the sheer tawdriness of the proposed partnership, we cannot but think of Marx’s observation on the tendency of history to repeat itself – in the first instance as tragedy, then as farce. ***************************************************** COME ON YOU REDS! One of the exciting aspects of life in otherwise rather drab British cities is the vibe that comes from the intense rivalry between the local football teams. On Merseyside we have Liverpool and Everton, Glasgow has Celtic and Rangers, in Sheffield we have United and Wednesday, and in Manchester we have, of course, Man United and Man City. What one team does, the other strives to emulate or outdo. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that just as plans are well advanced for the Gary Neville University, along comes Manchester City FC with the announcement that they have teamed up with Manchester Metropolitan University to set up … yes, you’ve guessed it … a new university! This project is the fruit of a relationship which MMU has built with the football club over many years. In a partnership that includes Manchester City Council, MMU plans to open a new ‘world-class sports university’ which will be the centrepiece of a major regeneration of the Eastlands area of the city. It will be sited alongside City’s Etihad Stadium and aims to recruit 3,000 undergrad and postgrad students ‘from all over the world’ (sounds familiar). The Manchester Evening News last week reported that ‘Manchester City is “110pc behind it”’, perhaps indicating that remedial arithmetic might form a key component of the curriculum. This now brings us an exciting line-up in Manchester that will surely add new lustre to fusty old notions of higher education. In the Red corner we will have Lancaster University, Man U’s finest from the golden era of ’92, and, it is rumoured, Trafford Council, which has its own rundown area to regenerate. And in the Blue corner will be MMU, Manchester City FC (with all that oil money behind it, and that’s not palm-oil), and Manchester City Council. And all vying for the same students to study the same things. Fearful symmetry indeed. Did our leaders know about this rival set-up before they embarked on their discussions with Gary Neville and Co? They certainly should have, because this partnership was first announced in July 2014. You can read all about at the MMU website http://www.mmu.ac.uk/news/news-items/2620/. It would seem that MMU’s management did not see the need to impose a gagging order on their staff. How silly of them. ***************************************************** LIMBERING UP FOR THE BIG ONE It seems that things are not going well with The Class of 92’s multi-million pound St. Michael’s project in Manchester. Not only are they getting it in the neck for the destruction of historic buildings that the project will entail (see subtext 158) but the design of the two vast blocks they intend to erect has also been widely criticised. The Guardian’s architecture and design critic has recently pointed to the record of the project’s designers, Make Architects, as originators of some of the worst buildings of recent times. These include Nottingham University’s Amenities Building, which has the distinction of being runner up in 2009 for the Carbuncle Cup for the ugliest building of that year. Readers can see it at http://www.nottinghampost.com/university-building-second-worst-uk/story-12176679-detail/story.html but a stiff whisky and soda is recommended before clicking on the link. Those who enjoy a punt now and then could do worse than putting a tenner on Make Architects being the designers for the Gary Neville campus (should it ever happen, of course). Attention is becoming increasingly focused on the other partners in the project, in particular, on Singapore-based tax avoider Peter Lim and his Rowsley company. According to The Guardian, Forbes Magazine has described him as someone who ‘makes money from thin air’, a reference to a previous property development deal in Malaysia. In the eyes of many Manchester folk, The Class of ’92 are, as The Guardian put it, ‘little more than the grinning PR face of a lucrative deal’ between the City Council, Lim and his other partners. The value of Neville and Co. in this role was recognised by Lim when he took a 75% stake in the boys’ operations in 2015. In a presentation given to Rowsley shareholders, the main benefit of the acquisition was stated as being to: "enable the Group to enter the Manchester real estate market to tap on growing demand, limited supply and future appreciation and build a platform for the Company to further venture into real estate in the United Kingdom". The St. Michael’s project shows them doing precisely that. By all accounts, Peter Lim is someone who does not waste his time on anything unlikely to yield a handsome dividend. And the same Peter Lim is likely to be a major shareholder in the proposed Gary Neville University (should it ever happen, of course, as we are bound to say). And what, we ask, will be in it for him? And will Lancaster University be one of those ‘grinning PR faces’? STOP PRESS: It was announced yesterday that, because of public pressure, Neville and co. have withdrawn the designs for the St. Michael’s development. There is hope yet... ***************************************************** TRUMP-LESS NEWS FROM AMERICA subtext understands that LUSU has been attempting to raise, with University management and Lancaster UCU, the issue of developing further facilities to film or record lectures to create a digital or on-line library of recorded lectures and other teaching sessions for use as future learning tools. subtext has commented on this issue several times over the last few years, noting that in the UK a number of academics and other staff have voiced concerns about the development of these practices. There are, of course, legal questions that need to be clarified with regard to intellectual property and copyright, performance rights and data protection. More prosaically, there is the question of the pedagogical value of such developments, the contractual obligations of staff, and the ownership and use of materials developed and delivered by them. There are also concerns about the inappropriate use of recorded lectures and teaching sessions. In practical terms there are implications concerning the workload for staff expected to put in place the necessary arrangements for the recording/filming of lectures, and the need for appropriate technical support. In the US things have taken a rather surprising turn on this subject. The University of California, Berkeley, stopped posting course lecture videos publicly in 2015 as a way to reduce costs. Subsequently, Berkeley has announced that as of March 2017 it will begin to eliminate all free online content rather than comply with a U.S. Justice Department order that it make the content accessible to those with disabilities. The Department of Justice determined that much of Berkeley’s online material was violating the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which requires colleges to make their publicly available offerings accessible to people with disabilities. The Department of Justice investigation followed complaints by two individuals who said that they were unable to use Berkeley’s online material because it had not been formatted for use by people with hearing disabilities. The Department of Justice ordered the University to make the content accessible to people with disabilities. Berkeley, however, came up with the alternative of removing everything from public view, arguing that the requirements proposed by the Department of Justice would require the University to implement extremely expensive measures to continue to make those resources available. This must have been particularly galling for some colleagues at Berkeley, because as the subtext drone we dispatched to the San Francisco Bay area was able to discover, the university generally seems to have done a lot to ensure it provides adequate resources for disabled students. Partly as a result of past lawsuits stretching back over decades, there is a dedicated drop-in-centre and an active and wide-reaching “Disabled Students’ Programme”. In the UK the legislation comparable to the Americans with Disabilities Act is the Equality Act 2010, which prohibits discrimination in employment or in the provision of training and education on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. If a workplace feature or practice puts an employee with a disability at a disadvantage, an employer should look to see what 'reasonable adjustments' such as ensuring that all videos and other on line material have subtitles, captions, and screen reader compatibility. ***************************************************** CHINESE WHISPERS The University press office is a well oiled machine, our marketing is ceaseless, and relentless self-promotion is second nature to us. One of the things we like to remind each other of is just how darned international we are. The Lancaster Brand is a sprawling megalopolis with skyscrapers in every corner of the globe. Let's talk about our long awaited China partnership, with Beijing Jiaotong University in Weihai. The negotiations to secure a base in China lasted several years, and were fraught with breakdowns and fallouts with investment partners. You would think that having finally set up shop, our marketing gurus would have given our bold new endeavour the full treatment. In the past, subtext has noted that, outside of our own communication channels, nobody is really talking about our international institutions (subtext 143), be they the league tables, education supplements or the relevant regional press (apart from when a bunch of Comsats students threatened to sue us). In the case of our Weihai campus, it seems that even our marketing gurus aren't interested. A quick Google search of the partnership gives us: Three press office news articles announcing that the partnership is going ahead.
Meanwhile, in our own international study guides on the University website, the pages advertising opportunities in India, Ghana and Malaysia provide links to websites offering a decent rundown of the courses on offer and how to apply, but the Beijing Jiaotong page offers nothing more than a contact email address for those seeking 'more information.' Our marketing and web reach for our international partnerships are base and crummy enough, but in the case of our China partnership, most people who have seriously sought it out couldn’t reasonably swear under oath that it even exists. ***************************************************** HARASSMENT subtext readers will have seen the recent report in the Guardian (Monday 6 March) on sexual harassment in UK universities. We are not entirely convinced by the headline assertion that "sexual harassment, misconduct and gender violence by university staff are at epidemic levels in the UK" - what, worse than in the seventies and eighties, as dramatised in "The History Man" and similar campus novels? It may be rather more likely that students and staff feel more able to report outrageous behaviour these days, which we certainly welcome. Whatever the reason for the increase in reported cases, we need to discuss the issue frankly. Readers of the print version of the Guardian's article will have noticed that Lancaster was marked as not having a policy for relationships between staff and students. This is not the case, and the table was quickly amended (good work by HR there) to say "Yes" in the online version: However, anyone trying to find that policy, by going to: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/hr/bullying.html and following the link to "Personal Relations between Staff & Students - Code of Conduct", gets the dreaded "404 - page not found"! The policy, last amended in 2004, is overdue for review - basically, relationships are permitted, as long as the staff member informs his or her Head of Department and is not directly involved in assessing the student's work. There is recognition that such relationships “raise serious questions of conflict of interest, of trust, confidence and dependency in working relations and of equal treatment of all students in teaching, learning, selection, assessment and research.” Is this sufficient? According to the Guardian's table, Lancaster has faced one allegation of staff-on-student harassment, and no allegations of staff-on-staff harassment, since 2011-12. Tip of the iceberg? Or an indication that the problem is not as serious as the headline may suggest? subtext would welcome your views. ***************************************************** DEMOCRACY IN ACTION As regular as clockwork, the LUSU sabbatical elections rolled around last week, and six new people have been elected to replace the outgoing officers. The results were as follows: President: Josh Woolf Vice-President (Union Development): Qas Younis Vice-President (Activities): Ben Francis Vice-President (Welfare & Community): Sofia Akel Vice-President (Education): Hannah Laycock Vice-President (Campaigns & Communications): Laura Wilkinson There is an interesting mixture of experience among the candidates. Mr. Younis and Mr. Francis served as President and Vice-President of their respective colleges, with the latter having had a considerable involvement with many sporting groups throughout his time at Lancaster, and this is the standard experience one would expect from the holders of the offices of Union Development and Activities. Ms. Wilkinson is presently the SCAN Editor, maintaining the (general) tradition of student media people going on to take the Campaigns & Communications role. Office holders with deep ties to student media has usually meant that they will be more than likely to hold LUSU to account. Ms. Akel, the new Welfare & Community Officer, has little collegiate experience but a wealth of campaigning experience and one extensive (and ‘impressive’) manifesto. Ms. Laycock is a former Social Secretary of Cartmel College, an odd springboard to the role of VP Education, and while her manifesto isn’t terribly exciting, her public appearances have demonstrated some of the nous on national issues required of the often underrated post. Having said that, her SCAN interview revealed that she could only name one of Lancaster’s four faculties - LUMS - so she may face a rather steep learning curve. The most ‘interesting’ winner would be the President-elect, Josh Woolf. Aside from being an NUS delegate, it’s difficult to find evidence of any relevant involvement or experience within LUSU or the Colleges. Aside from some vague remarks on car parking, there has been nothing solid from the President-elect. In his candidate interviews, he spoke almost exclusively in very vague terms about “listening to students” and “having office hours” and “going out and talking to students” and “finding out what students want” and a thousand other iterations of the same woolly pledge. It’s not the most confidence-inspiring campaign, which is concerning given that LUSU’s major issue over the last year has been an unwillingness to lead and shape student opinion. The subtext collective has heard a few people extolling the virtues of having “someone from the outside” for a “fresh perspective”, but this is just spin for having little to no experience and never having made the effort to get involved in the Union. We have no idea why having started at the bottom and working your way up is somehow less honourable than parachuting in at the last second and having a baptism of fire, and as for a “fresh perspective”, well, you wouldn’t give a plumber a crack at a heart operation for a fresh perspective on cardiovascular surgery. But, the proof of the pudding and all that... The subtext collective would like to congratulate the victors of the gruelling contest. The roles they have taken on are difficult and often thankless. We wish them well in their endeavours. ***************************************************** OVERHEARD IN THE FOYER OF FURNESS COLLEGE Older chap: “We are supposed to put these up on Moodle.” Slightly younger chap: “What’s Moodle?” Older chap: “It’s the thing we are supposed to put these up on.” ***************************************************** AS I WORDLED LONELY AS A CLOUD It appears that HR have finally worked out how to communicate at least some of the results of the detailed comments given as part of the Staff Survey (see subtext 157). What brilliant and nuanced technique did they harness to achieve this aim we can hear readers wondering aloud... Yup, a word cloud. Specifically, one which showed words used in the answers given to the question about Brexit. There is nothing wrong with word clouds per se. They allow the visual representation of the most frequently occurring word in a text or collection of texts. As such, they’re a reasonable way of communicating what texts are about, and they’re fairly easy for laypeople to understand. If a word in the cloud is bigger, it occurs more frequently, and thus might well be more important. They do have some limitations, however. For a start, choices have to be made about which words to include or exclude, as English has plenty of annoying little words that just happen to be more frequent than most others, like “the” or “and”, while not actually telling us much about the content of a text. So most word cloud generators exclude words with 3 letters or fewer by default. This is fine, unless words that *are* important in a text also fall into this category. In the present staff survey as a whole, for instance, that might include the acronym “TEF”. Or, specifically in the question about Brexit, it could include ”UK”, as in “Because of the uncertainty about Brexit, I am preparing to leave the UK”, or “I no longer feel welcome in the UK”. There are some more complicated ways of ensuring that words not relevant to content are ignored, but without a transparent account of the methodology used, it is hard to say how useful or accurate a word cloud actually is. On top of that, the word cloud published on the “Staff Survey Microsite” repeats words, an option sometimes chosen to make the word cloud look fuller and fit better into a complex shape like a speech bubble, so it is not even really possible to use the relative size of each word as an indicator of how frequent a word is. The most important issue with word clouds, however, is that they are *not* analysis of texts - they are (arguably) a simplified way of representing a small aspect of analysis. To be fair to HR, there is also a list of themes extracted from the 1,042 comments about Brexit in the Staff Survey. It is not clear how these were arrived at - presumably by someone reading each comment and deciding which theme (or themes) to assign it to. That is better than the word cloud on its own, and qualitative data usually requires some form of human interpretation, but again - no detail on methodology means there is no way of knowing the relative importance of each theme, how they overlap, or anything else really. subtext’s mark for University House: D–, we know you can do better than this. See someone (pretty much anyone) in FASS for advice. ***************************************************** LORDS BATTLE WISELY (LBW) Keen parliamentary spectators may have noticed that the Upper Chamber has had something of a busy couple of weeks. Batting on the side of common sense, the Lords may have lost out on Brexit, but those within higher education can hope for a better result on the HE Bill. By the close of play of its Report Stage in the House of Lords the Higher Education and Research Bill will look significantly different to how it entered, much against Universities Minister Jojo’s wishes. And not only Jojo’s. On the Friday before the vote the university employers tried to sabotage the Lords’ efforts by writing to individual members to urge them to vote for the Bill without any further amendment. Thankfully, this cut no ice with HE supporters in the Lords and successful amendments so far include:
It should be noted that the Lords have not actually expressed any opposition to increasing tuition fees by inflation; rather, their distaste for this policy lies in tying such increases to the TEF, which would mean that not all universities would be entitled to such an increase. They also haven’t passed an amendment that would prevent retrospective changes to the terms and conditions of student loans. In a roundabout way, they have ensured that higher education remains as level a playing field as it ever was – which is about as level as a unelected upper chamber. It’s not really cricket, but it could be a lot worse. With the next reading in the Commons due, we’ll wait with bated breath to see what amendments survive the next innings. ***************************************************** EIDERDOWNS The arrival of a pair of Mallard ducks in Alexandra Square prompted a naming competition in University House when it became apparent that they had taken up residence for a while. The outcome? ‘Eider’ and ‘Down’. Perhaps a subconscious yearning for soft beds and comfy bed coverings amongst the tired-but-still-turning-up workforce? For this tired correspondent the thought of eiderdowns resulted in a flashback to the last time I had one, the ubiquitous eiderdown having been replaced by the duvet so long ago. At the time I was an undergraduate, resplendent in the student uniform of the day (long coat from a charity shop, fingerless gloves and Doctor Marten boots), and I found myself making a comparison between the life of students then and now. Back in those days Universities still failed students. In my cohort there was a 40% ‘you’re out’ rate at the end of the first year, largely because it was before the 1988 Education Reform Act and universities could still afford to boot poorly performing students out. For the pleasure of being a student you were provided with a vinyl-floored cell and a bed that was part hammock and part trampoline. Shared bathrooms were largely unheated, hot water a luxury enjoyed only by those up early enough to be first in the shower and kitchens provided facilities suitable for four but shared by twenty. If you placed your hands on the radiator in your room and used your imagination you could just about detect some warmth, except in summer when they were, inexplicably, boiling hot. Eiderdowns, dragged out of lofts by parents setting their favourite son (or daughter) up for the coming ordeal were the only thing between us and hypothermia. We were forced to huddle together for warmth, or at least that’s what many potential girlfriends were told. Beer came in the form of cans of ‘Ansell’s Mild’ at 30p a pop. There was one bar on our large Leicester campus, no covered walkways and no shop unless you wanted to buy academic materials. It is only when reflecting on life as a student in the early 80’s that you really come to appreciate just what universities now provide. In the case of Lancaster, modern rooms with heating that works most of the time, decent facilities, good bars, shops and all sorts of other entertainments. Students are as likely to be seen sporting designer gear and the latest iPhone as a pair of battered DMs. I tip my hat to you, Eider and Down. Once upon a time you would have been plucked and stuffed into a shiny quilt for an impoverished student to shiver under. These days you get to enjoy the delights of University life along with the rest of us. ***************************************************** SAVING THIS SORT OF THING subtext reported in the last edition (159) on the 'Free the Ink' campaign, an initiative by some third year students and academics, who want to see the University become yet more paperless and switch to online-only coursework submission and marking. In our observations on the subject we noted that not everyone was on board with the idea for a variety of reasons: GTAs felt it would add to their workload, admin staff worried it could be a stalking horse for decreasing the size of their workload (and as such hours and pay), there were general pedagogical concerns around the quality of feedback when marking online, and general common sense concerns that if the cost of printing was simply shifted onto the marker there would be a net gain to the environment of exactly nil. The opposition to the campaign clearly touched a nerve. Swift as you could load a print cartridge the movement had printed a two sided, single spaced A4 broadsheet response and plastered it up and down various corridors. Printing on both sides obviously saved some paper rather than ink but if you wanted to read the entire missive you had to take it down from the wall/door/window to get the full message, inevitably removing it from general public view. We are aware that a number of subscribers like to print out their latest edition of subtext rather than read it on screen. People really do like having something to hold. The printed page is more durable and user-friendly than some people have started to give it credit for - something the ‘Free The Ink’ campaign do not appear to realise. Although their campaign does reflect in microcosm the wider cultural shift away from reading in print to reading on screen. And it’s become clear that, even as the number of subtext subscribers continues to grow, there has been decreasing direct engagement with each issue – until the last one (159) which resulted in a bumper letters section in this edition. It could be connected to the physical act of letter writing, which we are continuously being told is dying, and the medium by which such things are dispatched and delivered. The wonderful thing about email is its immediacy – you expect (students certainly do) an instant reply. However an email letter to subtext involves a forced patience built into the process. But it is surely worth it - more please, in hard copy if you prefer! ***************************************************** LETTERS Dear subtext Attendance check-in As someone who does not own a smartphone and has zero intention of buying one in the future, I now have to go up to the lecturer at the front of the class to sign myself in. I can't help but feel that I, along with the few other people in my class who can't afford to own expensive smartphones, am being openly shamed in front of a class of >50 by pretty much being forced to stand at the front of the lecture theatre and declare that I am poor. It seems that the university is just implementing loads of pointless new technologies willy-nilly in order to appear "progressive", without considering the consequences for those students who do not have 24-hour access to a smartphone/laptop/the internet etc. With love and chaos, Kass ******** Dear Referees Whilst in no way wishing to background the subject matter of 'Letter from America' in subtext 159, might it be noted that your assumption that Hadrian's Wall demarcates Scotland from England ignores (inter alia) the existence of the County of Northumberland which for the moment stubbornly remains in England. Northumbrians are used to being ignored by Southerners but if the editorial collective in future could contemplate a de-fence of your unfortunate cognitive map, it would be appreciated by those readers off-side in the liminal half-world of Tweed to Tyne. Thank you Gibson Burrell ******** Dear subtext The reference in your last issue to 'Rabbie' Burns seems a trifle over-familiar. Billy Wordsworth and Johnny Keats, as nobody calls them, who both wrote admiringly of Robert Burns, would not have approved. On the Gary Neville University, management might find it useful to consult Howard Jacobson's first novel, Coming from Behind (1983), which recounts a twinning arrangement between Wrottesley Polytechnic and the local football club. David Smith ******** Hello Your reference to Spartacus reminded me of a story I came across a few years ago. Kirk Douglas's son Eric had ambitions to be a stand-up comedian and was performing at the Comedy Store. It wasn't going well and he was getting increasingly upset by the audience's reaction. Eventually he lost his cool and shouted: "You can't do this to me, I'm Kirk Douglas's son!" At which point someone stood up and said "No, I'm Kirk Douglas's son." Then someone else: "No, I'm Kirk Douglas's son." And so on all round the audience. Best regards Gerry Cotter ******** Hello All, Thanks for another great issue. Whilst I would not normally recommend reading the Daily Mail, the following article appeared on my social media feed and I though the editors might enjoy it: https://donotlink.it/RvBo - "[the report] urges universities to commit to ideological diversity with the same fervour they commit to gender, class and race diversity". Regards, Robin. ******** Dear subtext One of our old associates has forwarded a recent article in subtext, 'Ravages of Time', about the possible ending of the Making Time garden. Although it was always in the nature of the project that what might happen after our year-long making was out of our hands, we have kept an eye on it over time, though have not visited for the last 2 years. I wonder if anything drastic has happened yet? We might be able to make a visit soon, and perhaps if there were to be any (in)formal ceremony, as envisaged, we would like to know... Or perhaps time has done its business already?! Best wishes, Jonathan Raisin ***************************************************** The editorial collective of subtext currently consists of (in alphabetical order): Paul Arthur, James Groves, Lizzie Houghton, Ian Paylor, Ronnie Rowlands, Joe Thornberry, and Johnny Unger. |