Assed Baig beats the BNP. Go President Baig

In the face of a vicious, racist campaign at his uni Assed Baig has proved that All it Takes for Evil to Triumph is for Good Men to do Nothing by winning the presidency of the students' Union.

Assed has not done nothing and therefore evil has  not triumphed.

Baigus has been an inspiration to many standing firm on his politics fighting fascism on campus, defending liberation campaigns and campaigning for free education for all (amongst many other things). Last year he did a national speaking tour  on the topic 'What is Racism?' putting his studies in jeopardy, and not seeing  his son for days on end. 

The campaign against him included smears about his personal life but worse still apparently he was going to:

• implement sharia law
  
• close the night club
• separate women in classes and social spaces
• have only curry in the catering services (like that would be a bad thing!!)
• references to Assed bin Osama
• and more.

Read his report HERE if you are on facebook  or HERE if you are not which includes all 116 comments.

His university is in the heartland of the BNP and has had fellow campaigners beaten up for working with p*ki's. He has campaigned tirelessly on his campus for a few years now, has been on  the SU exec for 2 and now has proven that he knows how to put his money where his mouth is and has built many campaigns on what was otherwise an awful politically passive university.

Here are a few of the lovely comments on his facebook page: 

From Bonolo Woracker - Oh My Days Brother!!!! Congratulations dude, I am so proud and happy. I knew you would make it!! You have been an inspiration and mentor to me and now I know you can only bring good things to the students at Staffs!! If you don't stand up for something, you will fall for anything!! Congrats President Assed!!

Jennifer Jones - So amazing you're elected, can't believe you managed despite all the lies and smears. proves you can't win an election by relying on islamophobia! now racism will never go unchallenged on your campus. you're gonna be brilliant next year I will be so proud to waive motions to you at NUS! "Goldsmiths waives to Assed Baig, President of Staffordshire Students' Union"!!!

Shamin Akhtar - Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.

I feel compelled to share the thoughts of Subhaiha Sheik which she wrote after having accompanying Assed on his tour: Why racism is very much White on Black.

I want to wish Assed all the best and would like you all to send your support to him on facebook (if you're on it).

tell me what I will have learned

 

Cross posted from infinite thØught

Helen DeWitt with an interesting addendum to the Massimo de Angelis and David Harvie paper I linked to recently.

'...the fact is, the instructor, no matter how brilliant, cannot specify what the learning outcomes of the course should be, because it is not in his or her power to assert that measuring up to his or her understanding of what is the case is the best outcome for the course.'

Absolutely true, this (not to mention the uncomfortably unclear tautology of 'aims and objectives' which DeWitt also highlights) - there is something both wearying and impossible about churning out endless 'aims and outcomes' for courses, as if writing prescriptions for the ether. Do students in week 12 go back to the list and check them off? Do they feel cheated if they feel they haven't achieved such-and-such an aim? I've never once seen or heard about this happening. Who are they for? Some benchmark big other, no doubt, whose opaque desires the external validation committee must internalise when pronouncing on the continued survival of the degree programme...

Meetings oscillate wildly between boundless enthusiasm for new projects and total despair - collaborations! (could we not please think of another word? It's very difficult not to think of French Nazis) interdisciplinarity! (like people from different subjects smacking each other on the arse with a paddle) international recognition! (like the world looking in a mirror...aargh! The face of Hegel!). This for a while then the 'but staffing issues...funding...' claw of cynical realism starts its inevitable throttling... 

Although it currently looks like a good idea to be a public servant of one kind or another (as the spivs in shiny shoes run off to teacher training college), it won't be long before the financial crisis hits universities hard (funny how the 'trickle-down' is so much more effective when it's the redistribution of loss). Small departments are in big trouble. Any good will extended towards the future ('give us five years to prove how good we could be!') will be retracted in the name of short-term savings. Informed once again the other day that our department was not in the strongest position because we had no 'stars', it was hard not to imagine senior management pitting small programmes against one another in a kind of X-factor head-to-head (But she once had a piece in the Guardian! But he appeared on Newsnight! Isn't he friends with Martin Amis? Doesn't she have contacts in the city?). 

The management solution, of course, is to cut the time allowed for research (while at the same time push for constant publication) and demand cuts in teaching ('why can't you run seminars with 20?') in favour of the churning out of grant applications. Sod the students! Once they're here we've got their money, who cares if they repeatedly tell us they want more teaching and more seminars and more intellectual engagement? And PhD students! Get lots of them! They bring in tons of cash! Too bad you don't have enough time to write anything on a topic that someone might want to come and work with you on.

Report back from Another Education is Possible conference

Over 170 delegates participated throughout the day in the various workshops and debates. The overwhelming feeling of delegates was that we need an urgent response to the crisis in our education system. The NUS is not going to act to mobilise students so we need to fill that gap and start to rebuild the student movement from below. In this spirit the conference passed the founding statement and three amendments focused on action. Below are the initiatives called by the conference and the results of the committee elections.

Emergency Demonstration - 3pm on Friday the 14^th of November

Assemble outside Westminster Cathedral, Victoria Street (5 minutes from Victoria station)

Tax the rich to fund…

• FREE EDUCATION & LIVING GRANTS FOR ALL
• £200 million “missing” from the governments budget for higher education but Billions in bail outs for the bankers

We have seen year-on-year attacks on our right for an education. The latest are cuts to thousands of student grants after a £200 million short-fall from the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills. This comes only a few weeks after the government promised to bail out bankers with billions of tax payer’s money.

(Publicity will be out in the next few days)

For a National Student Demonstration (25^th of Feburary)

The existing calls for a national demonstration are positive and need to be turned into real activity on the ground. The conference agreed to call the demonstration for Wednesday the 25^th of February assembling at ULU. The demonstration will then be in run up to the government announcing its new budget.

The conference also committed itself to organising an open meeting to discuss the demonstration and take the organisation of it to the next level. The steering committee will meet soon to put together an event where we can both launch the demonstration and draw together as many activists as possible to organise mobilising for it.

A National Tour

The conference noted that many high profile figures support our call to build a student movement for free education. The steering committee will organise contact speakers to organise meetings across the country to discuss what is happening to our education and organise action to defend it.

Election Results:

The following committee was elected:

Chair: Damiani Sourmaidou

Secretary: Yousuf Joondan

Convener: Dominic Kavakeb

Treasurer: Jenny Jones

Communications: Rob Owen

Block of ten:

Tom Wills (Sussex)

Bonolo Woracker (Coventry)

Zakeera Suffee (Essex)

Mpegwa Mwakang'ata (SOAS)

James Norrie (Oxford)

Alison Smith (Plymouth)

Siobhan Brown (Manchester)

James Foley (Glasgow)

Ben Sellers (SOAS)

Matt Vicary (Sheffield Hallam)

Another Education is Possible conference-sign up now

Sign up HERE

Conference Agenda 1st November

11 – 11.30 am Registration:
Registration desk will be inside the foyer of the main SOAS Building. If you have not yet paid you will be asked for a £5 fee to receive your ticket

11.30 – 12.30 pm Opening Session: Education in a Neoliberal World:
Room G2 (on left handside of SOAS reception desk)

• Paul Mackney, former joint General Secretary of University and College Union
• Italian Student, activist from the occupation of Rome University. Witness to the wave of occupations and protests sweeping Italy.
• Alex Callinicos, Author of “Education in a neoliberal world”
• Stalin Vermudez, victimised cleaners leader and SOAS Unison branch chair

12.30 – 1pm Lunch break: Home made Ugandan food will be served for a suggested price of £4. All proceeds will gotowards the cost of educating refugee children.

1 – 2.30 pm Workshops:

Fighting Racism and Fascism (Room G2)

• Brian Richardson, ‘Tell it like it is’ campaign on racism in education.
• MC’s Lo Key and Bashy, leading UK grime artists involved in Love Music Hate Racism
• Assed Baig, Staffordshire Student Union Exective

Stopping Climate Chaos (Room G50)

• Phil Thornhill, Campaign against Climate Change
• Alison Smith, VP Education and Welfare Plymouth SU

Anti war, Troops Out Now (Room G51)

• Andrew Murray, Stop the War coalition
• George Solomou, Former Soldier involved in Military Families against the War
• Noreen Fatima, Student at London Met University

Recession and Resistance (Room G52)

• Ben Sellers, SOAS Justice for Cleaners and Co President SOAS SU
• Sean Vernell, UCU Left activist and member of UCU National Executive (pc)
• PCS branch secretary on how we can support the PCS strikes

2.45 – 4.15 The future of the student movement - What sort of NUS do we need?
Room G2
Wes Streeting, NUS National President Vs Rob Owen, NUS National Executive

4.30 – 5.30: Closing Session: Building a democratic, campaigning student movement
Room G2, Chair: Ben Sellers

Unprecedented debt and no jobs for the class of 2008

Found this in the Times Online. Wish I had time to write something on this myself like " der, what do you expect?"-maybe tomorrow...

The class of 2008 faces unprecedented levels of debt and is struggling to find jobs as the credit crunch takes hold.

Students who graduated from university this summer have apparently never have had it so bad. Many borrowed tens of thousands of pounds in student loans on the assumption that they would walk into well-paid employment.

But graduate recruitment has been suspended or reduced by some companies as they struggle to stay afloat. Rather than taking their first step on to the career ladder, graduates are instead moving back in with their parents and accruing interest on debts as they look for work.

One graduate from the London School of Economics said: “I thought after I got a masters degree from a world-renowned school that I would have an easier time finding a job. I was wrong....

Read more here