Students at the University of East London have won an important victory after occupying the vice chancellors office at the beginning of May. More than 100 students from various courses joined the protest over course mergers, cutbacks, loss of space and teaching time.
After 24 hours, students emerged to meet with management who agreed to some of their demands.
The demands were; no course mergers to save money, secure terms and conditions for lecturers, no reduction in teaching space and free education as a universal human right.
Management agreed to double the theoretical units of the proposed new Graphic Design course and re-employ staff. They also agreed to no victimisation of students who took part in the occupation.
Graphic Design students have been campaigning since January against the merger of their course which would create a new diluted Digital Arts and Communication degree. But students from other courses such as law, architecture and Social Sciences are all facing cuts.
One law student reported that there were not enough chairs and tables in their teaching space, and students were forced to sit on the floors and windowsills for lectures.
English student Jo who joined the occupation told Socialist Resistance: 'when we found out that people were doing this we thought it was brilliant, so we came up. I worked hard to get to university against the odds, why should we suffer just because we're students at UEL?'
At a meeting of the board of governors in March, one member of staff reported that the new Architecture and Visual Arts building did not have disabled access because it had been built on the cheap.
UEL has been dogged by financial problems for years. The Vice chancellor has acknowledged that even though the Graphic Design course was successful, other courses were losing money and so had to merge to ensure the School of Architecture and Visual Arts balanced its books.
The introduction of top-up fees will create a market within higher education which will ensure univers ties such as UEL, with a high proportion of working class students, will dilute its courses to save money.
Solidarity greetings from campaigners and tao unionists came in almost immediately from activists in Unison, the RMT, RESPECT, students : South Bank University, and even an anticapitais gathering taking place in Poland
UEL students have shown that the fight for decent education is only just beginning, and is ar inspiration to students across the courtry and beyond
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the move from Coca-colonisation to CNN-isation Maxy Newton GLOBALISATION has been acknowledged as the advance by multinationals and governments of the richer nations to spread economic liberalisation. This has a major impact on political, social and cultural systems.
The purpose is to access new markets to make profit in the interests of capital accumulation. Although it is done in the name of levelling society to bring equality and individualism for all, the dominant process of globalisation has intimate connections with the process of westernisation.
Globalisation was visible in the 19th century where imperialism enabled the conquest of the world. Western imperialism was able to accumulate resources from its colonies such as raw materials.
Following the Cold War, the disintegration of communism and the fall of the Berlin wall, western capitalism became the main ideology. One Nigerian political commentator, J Isawa Elaigwu recently stated the reality of this; he observed that from 'Coca-colonization of the world, we have arrived at the CNNization of the world.'
By this he meant that the media imposes western ideas and eradicates traditions, cultures and values by replacing them with the culture values of more economically advanced countries, particularly the United States and European Union member states.
Transmitting the values and politics of business culture whilst advancing their concept of democracy, human rights and lifestyle as the model. But the doctrine of the west has not encouraged the development of the global south or third world countries.
Globalisation, as we know it today, is a new form of western imperialism and hegemony which is sweeping across the world forcing its ideas on individual cultures and bringing them to extinction. If a nation does not conform to the idea of globalisation it will be thrown backwards as an undeveloped and poverty stricken nation.
Countries that do adopt the westernised ideology will find their culture diminished and corrupted. Many in the third world argue that globalisation is only the latest stage of western economic and cultural domination of the rest of the world which started over five hundred years ago. Globalisation is only the current phase and expression of this uninterrupted history of Many in the third world argue that globalisation is only the latest stage of western economic and cultural domination of the rest of the world which started over five hundred years ago. ...........and cultural domination of one nation over another.
Although colonisation is no more, African countries are unable to independently govern themselves, or to restore their history, culture and identity,
The extended family system is no longer regarded as the culture of Africans, originally developed to help the poor. Instead, the idea of individualism is welcomed, and corruption in public life and excessive materialism among the educated classes is rife.
Low food production has led to the importation of food and many third world countries are in huge debt, giving way to further exploitation. The global circuit which pumps capital and goods round the economies of the south. domination and subjugation of peoples, nations, and cultures from the conquistadors and colonists. It is a tradition of political, ecowhich was system sweeps through the
The west buys supplies from the third world at a cheap rate and them dumps its production on the third world for consumption. By doing this the west exports most of its products to the third world and deprives it from developing. African languages have been reduced to artistic performance. If globalisation succeeds the world will one day become monolingual. One consequence is that since much of the hardware is Americanowned and much of the programming is American in origin, English is becoming the lingua franca of the global communications system and vernaculars may be restricted to localized and domestic use. Workers in the third world are part of a flexible workforce supplying cheap labour. Globalisation also brings about privatisation and deregulation, which will come in the form of state controls over areas of economic control for example foreign exchange rates, labour market polices and price control. Developing COULT IES have accepted the IMF/World Bank conditional ties accompanying loans. Poor developing countries suffer from heavy debt services and are marginalised from interna. tional financial markets. They have had little choice except to borrow from these institu tions and accept the conditions
Globalisation is no panacea for development but a way for the leaders of the world to dictate to the rest of the world
The third world needs to stand up for itself to prevent a repetition of colonialism and embargo the process of globalisation. The way toward development is not by receiving charity but to fight our own way out of the struggle.
In other to develop there will need to be a way of investing in agriculture. The west has no interest in the development of third world countries except to export their products. This they call aid. Maxy Newton is a student at South Bank
University, London
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highlights