The approach of students’ unions by police last week, asking for information on ‘vulnerable’ Muslim students, has been condemned by the National Union of Students and UCLan’s Islamic Society.

Police implementing the newly re-focused Prevent strategy – which aims to prevent terrorism as well as the supporting of it – approached universities and colleges across the country to ask that they are informed of Muslim students who appear isolated or depressed.

Students who access extremist websites or hold political grudges, are estranged from their families or have “poor access to mainstream religious instruction” could also be at risk of radicalisation, according to paperwork handed to staff.

But National Union of Students (NUS) Vice President (Welfare), Pete Mercer, vowed to continue challenging the Government and police nationally on their approach to preventing the radicalisation in universities and colleges.

Mercer said: “It is unacceptable that police would see it as appropriate to approach students’ unions for details of students who have not knowingly committed any criminal act.”

The NUS are advising their staff and officers they are under no obligation to provide police with any details – without first being presented with a warrant.

And, despite nobody from UCLan having yet been approached by officers, Islamic Society President, Mohammed Patel, said the move would stigmatise Muslim students.

“Every single Islamic Society in the country, without a doubt, will condemn any form of extremism,” he said. “However, what we will not support is the invasion of privacy and effectively allow the staff to ‘spy’ on its students,” he said.

“Undoubtedly, Muslims and non-Muslims alike need to be vigilant in these times towards any suspicious activity. However, to spy on students is outrageous and to stereotype a whole community is irrational, especially when Islamaphobia proliferates daily.”

And rather than spending money on schemes such as Prevent, which launched in 2007 ahead of its review earlier this year, Patel believes money should instead be provided for more inter-faith work to promote a better understanding of faiths and to dispel common misconceptions.

He said: “A person with a lack of understanding (of the Muslim faith) may wonder why a student is going into the Multifaith Centre five times a day.

“Due to a lack of knowledge, they might not know the student is fulfilling their obligatory acts of worship.”

Part of CONTEST, the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent was previously criticised by Home Secretary, Theresa May, who said it had resulted in “complacency” around universities.

Over the next four years, Prevent aims to counter the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat of those who promote it.

They also aim to prevent people from being radicalised and to work with a wide range of sectors – including education, criminal justice, charities and the Internet – where, according to the government, there are risks of radicalisation.

Welcome!

UCLan Students' Union President, Reni Eddo-Lodge

 

First of all, I’d like to say hello to both returners and freshers. It’s an absolute honour to be your student union president for the year ahead. If we’ve not met yet, come and find me on the first floor of the students union, and while you’re at it, come at see the rest of the Student Affairs Committee!

Is it time to hold another national demo?

Some of the more beady eyed amongst you will notice that there’s been a concerted effort from other student unions across the country to hold another national demonstration.

Those of you who were students at UCLan last year will probably know that, with direction from the National Union of Students, UCLan Students’ Union took three coach-loads of students to the streets of Westminster to protest against higher fees.

Over the past year we’ve seen the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance, the scrapping of the government’s Aim Higher scheme, and the tripling of tuition fees- not to mention the recent announcement that 794,000 young people are not in education, employment or training. Many universities have already made their fee decision, including our own, but the creeping privatisation of higher education as a whole is a prospect that worries many.

There a pros and cons of holding another national demo. Many will argue that it’s important to keep up the momentum. Others will say that the battle has already been lost. There are debates to be had locally, and the changes to higher education could potentially cause changes to the university that we know and love.

But ultimately, these are my opinions, and as president I’m reluctant to make a decision without consulting the people I represent first.

So, what do you think? Do you love the idea of another national demo, or think it’s pointless? There will be an open meeting next week (Tuesday 27^th September, 5pm, Atrium) for some discussion and debate, but in the mean time you’re welcome to email me with your thoughts at supresident@uclan.ac.uk.

Last year's national student demonstration. Photo by semisara (Flickr).

A UCLan student is up against Gandalf in a national award organised by the Lesbian and Gay Foundation.

Sam Whalley, left, receiving her NUS LGBT Student of the Year award.

Neuropsychology student Sam Whalley, who is the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rep on the Students’ Union’s council, has been nominated alongside Sir Ian McKellen for the ‘Homo Hero Awards 2011’.

Sam has also been voted LBT Student of the Year at the National Union of Students’ awards this year.

She said: “I’m completely speechless about being nominated. It is quite amazing to be up against Sir Ian McKellen!

“I’ve done a lot of work this year with UCLan LGBT society and I am the LGBT Student of the Year too which has built me a lot of kudos and helped me meet a lot of people who were the ones who nominated me.

The award aims to recognise the people, groups and organisations who are making a difference to lesbian, gay and bisexual people and their lives.

Winners will be announced during a ceremony on Thursday September 22 at the Mint Hotel, Manchester.

“At UCLan this year I set up Project Proud which is an initiative for both LGBT and straight students to talk about what they are proud about.

“I also helped develop the M and M mentoring LGBT service which I’m really proud of too,” Sam added.

“I think my nomination says a lot about Preston as a community and how far we have come. This nomination isn’t just for me, it’s for the whole community.”

Voting closes at 10am on Wednesday September 7 and you can vote for Sam at https://www.lgf.org.uk/surveys/index.php?sid=72667&lang=en.

UCLan’s Vice-Chancellor Malcolm McVicar has told Pluto that he is against any rise in tuition fees.

Malcolm McVicar at this year's Town Takeover debate

With Lord Browne’s review into Higher Education funding due out next month, there has been increased speculation about the recommendations it will give.

The main topic of speculation is the expected proposal of tuition fees increasing to £7,000 per year.

In a speech to the Vice-Chancellor’s organisation, Universities UK, Universities minister David Willetts has said that he wants students to pay more.

“What would not make sense would be to fail to increase the contribution from graduates, with the result that then we jeopardise the student experience or end up having to make big cuts in student numbers.”

However McVicar has said that while UCLan is yet to express its official position, he is not keen on a rise in fees.

“The University has not yet determined its official position on any change to the fee regime,” he said.

“The board will wait until the Browne Review is published.  Personally, I am opposed to any increase in fees and any reduction in the current level of financial support for students.”

Set up by the previous government, Lord Browne’s review into higher education funding is due to report back to the coalition government next month

And despite expectations that it will recommend a fees, a range of possibilities have been discussed by ministers and universities.

Steve Smith, from Universities UK, has called for tuition fees to vary from institution to institution.

“I think universities should be able to charge differential fees because they’re offering different experiences,” he said.

“I would have thought the Coalition Government would have wanted to factor in its recommendations to the review.

“Fixing it by just upping the cap [on tuition fees] would simply mean that we’d be back here again in three to five years arguing whether we should let it be raised from, say, £5,000 to £7,000.”

Smith also said that while he didn’t expect institutions to close, the possibility of universities merging to help pull through any financial hardships that lay ahead.

“My personal view is there will not be closures. I think mergers, yes, could be on the cards – although they do not necessarily save money. You might do it to form a very strong organisation if two institutions aren’t doing very well.

“I think there is also going to be a lot of regional co-operation, to make sure certain subjects are available regionally. But I’m not one of those people who think that institutions will be going to the wall.”

Richard Lambert, director general of the Confederation of British Industry has said he thinks universities could struggle to pull through if cuts are announced.

However McVicar has ruled out the possibility of merging with another university.

“UCLan is already a large university and I don’t think a merger with another institution would appeal.  We would not consider a merger with another university where significant senior management time would need to be diverted from running our university to “rescuing” the other institution.”

The expected rise in tuition fees has angered students with National Union of Students’ President, Aaron Porter criticising the proposals.

“The financial pressure on young people is mounting, and an increase in fees to £7,000 would, according to universities’ own figures, consign a generation to unsustainable mortgage-style debts in excess of £32,000,” he said.

His words have been echoed by UCU lecturers’ union general secretary Sally Hunt. She said: “Increasing fees or other financial barriers to higher education is not the way to deliver a world-class university system. The uncomfortable truth is that for the vast majority of people in this country higher fees would be a disaster.”

By David Stubbings

News Editor

HannHHImmiifffImmigration minister Damian Green believes that the current numbers of international students is unsustainable.

Immigration minister Damian Green

Research published by the Home Office showed that almost 40,000 international students who arrived in the UK in 2004 still remain in the UK after graduating.

Mr Green is leading a review into student visas in line with plans to introduce an immigration cap.

“The limits we’ve already set among those on work visas are necessary but not sufficient. We need to look at other routes,” he said.

“We can see that 186,000 [international students] came in during 2004 and by 2009 more than 20 per cent of them were still here. Student numbers have risen fast. In the year to June 2010, 300,000 visas were issued to students and their dependents.”

However plans to review the policy on student visas have angered international students. Canadian Kenneth Grierson graduated this summer from UCLan, thinks the plans are unfair and that the government are unfairly targeting students.

“I came to the UK because a degree from here is respected worldwide. My course was geared towards international students, and most went home afterwards. A handful have stayed, but from what I’ve seen, they can afford it.

“They have stayed because living abroad is an exciting experience, and because visas issued by the UK allow for it.

“I worked part-time for the year because I was legally allowed. I won an internship over the summer for the same reason. Everything I have done is completely legitimate under current policy, yet I feel like a villain.

“Forget the fact that I have spent nearly £20,000 to be here and have gone through the exact same application process as English citizens.

“If the UK has a problem with foreign students staying too long, then they should change the policies that govern the visas.”

National Union of Students President, Aaron Porter, contests the claims made by the government.

“To suggest that the levels of those coming to the UK to study is too high is a politically motivated misinterpretation. The Government should be proud that students choose to study in this country creating an education industry worth £12.5 billion a year to the British economy.

“Damian Green has clearly failed to recognise that our home students also benefit from sharing an experience with colleagues and friends from abroad.”

By Hannah Breeze

Deputy News Editor

UCLan’s Students’ Union are encouraging students to get involved with this year’s national student demonstration.

The event, organised by the NUS and the University and College Union (UCU), takes place in London on Wednesday November 10 under the slogan of ‘Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts’, in protest of expected cuts in university funding.

NUS president Aaron Porter is calling for as many students as possible to take part and dissuade the government from raising tuition fees.

“These are tough times and they require tough choices. Ministers and university leaders will not shirk from that task,” he said.

“We need to be there to make their decisions tougher, we need to prevent them from making the wrong choices, to defend and protect our priorities and those of our membership.

“We need to be out on the streets of London, we need to be in our local communities making this a key issue for constituencies and their MPs and we need to be inside the rooms where the deals will be made. To have an impact, we need to do all of these things and do them well.”

Overall Porter hopes 15,000 students attend the London protest which he describes as “the largest education demonstration in a decade”.

He added: “We need to build for a year of action on a scale that we have not undertaken since the higher education bill six years ago.”

Last week saw the first regional meeting took place at UCLan’s SU with Lancaster and Cumbria student unions to discuss individual campaigns and ways of mobilising students for the demonstration.

“We are planning to take 100 students but we would love more to go,” said student president Michael Palmer.

“We want students to not just take part in the demonstration but actively engage with the campaign. The demonstration is just part of it.

“Mobilising students to London shows they [the NUS] are very passionate about it. It is important.”

UCLan has said students wishing to take part in the demonstration will be given authorised absences from classes, providing they contact lecturers beforehand.

The individual theme at UCLan is ‘Pay More, Get Less’ with a number of events planned by campaigns officer Laura Hicks.

To get involved contact campaigns officer Laura Hicks at sucampaigns@uclan.ac.uk to join the UCLan’s events mailing list. Alternatively, visit the Student Affairs Committee office on the first floor of the Students’ Union next to the Atrium.

For information on the national demonstration register at www.demo2010.org.

In light of our new Conservative universities minister, Mr David Willets, branding university students ‘a burden on the taxpayer’, it was only a matter of time before the tuition fees debate reared its ugly head again.

As soon as the Conservatives chose to form an alliance with the Liberal Democrats rather than forming a minority government, it was glaringly obvious that both political parties’ opposing stances on university tuition fees would not sit well with one another- so much so that, to avoid division in the new coalition, the Lib Dems have been allowed to chose to abstain from voting for against the issue in parliament.

Convenient, once you consider the long standing Liberal Democrat stance on the abolition of higher education tuition fees.

On the campaign trail, both Nick Clegg and Vince Cable signed an NUS pledge vowing to vote against a rise in tuition fees if they were elected into parliament. It was this core value that drew a lot of previously apolitical students into politics, and gave us an incentive to go out and vote- a policy that directly affected us.

In stark contrast, the Conservatives remained sketchy on their stance on tuition fees throughout the general election campaign. When asked, representatives from the party told student voters that they wouldn’t comment on whether they’d raise tuition fees until they’d examined the results of a review into the state of fees.

Again, rather conveniently, those results will not be released until long after May 6 (it’s been reported that the results of the review will be available some time in the autumn). Willets spoke about the current loan system, commenting that it was ‘unsustainable’- and many students felt the sting of the overwhelmed system last academic year when thousands of us received late payments of our student loans. His remarks are the strongest indication yet of a rise in tuition fees.

The phrase Con/Dem Nation emerged as a trending topic on the social networking website, Twitter, after Britain’s new coalition government was slowly and painfully announced. Funny as the phrase was at the time, Cameron’s savage spending cuts have revealed the flippant phrase to ring uncomfortably true.

A radical shake-up of further and higher education could see the numbers of students going to university drop dramatically.

The new business secretary Vince Cable has ordered the changes amid claims that the expansion of undergraduate places has compromised the quality of teaching in higher education establishments.

University spending has already been hit hard by the new government.

A source close to Cable said: “There needs to be a big national debate between excellence and quality on the one hand and bums on seats on the other hand. Packing more and more students in is not necessarily good value for money.”

More money will be put into vocational training and further education in order to increase its popularity amongst students.

Cable’s plans directly oppose the previous government’s higher education targets.

Aaron Porter, President-elect of the National Union of Students opposes the new government plans.

He said: “Cable’s plans would jeopardise the fragile economic recovery and place us at risk of returning to a higher education system accessible only to a liberal elite.”

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union agreed that a debate on the future of universities was necessary but that cutting university places was not the answer.

“Vince Cable gave a very moving speech about how education transformed his mother’s life, and I cannot see how denying thousands the chance to fulfil their potential at university and increasing the strain on the benefits system would be in this country’s interest,” she said.

By Hannah Breeze

Deputy News Editor

Photo courtesy of say_cheddar

Higher Education funding faces huge cuts under the new government, following the Treasury Announcemvent.

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer

University funding will be cut by £82m and they will be asked to make up for it in efficiency savings in the next year.

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, today announced their plans for financial savings and cuts for 2010-11. Overall, there are to be £6.2b of savings.

Further Education faces fewer cuts. Spending for 16-19 year olds in education will be protected under the new government financial plans. £150m will be used to help deliver up to 50,000 adult apprenticeships.

Aaron Porter, NUS President Elect, responded to the Higher Education cuts.

“Universities have already had to cope with huge cuts for the coming academic year and to hit already tight budgets, especially without giving institutions time to prepare, is self-defeating,” he said.

“Whilst we welcome the investment in further education it is short-sighted to make cuts that will inevitably lead to poorer standards of teaching for students at the very time when highly-skilled graduates are needed to help the country on the road to recovery.”

The announcement also included £836m savings from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The Modernisation Fund budget also faces a £118m cut, meaning cutting STEM subject places by half.

The cuts suggest that more financial emphasis will be places on students and their families.

“Asking students and their families to pay more for less would be unacceptable and we will fight to ensure that the coalition takes its responsibility to students seriously,” Mr Porter added.

By Hannah Breeze

Deputy News Editor

Photo courtesy of the CBI.