DERWENT CHAIR Joe Rankin has said the campaign to save 24-hour portering on campus is “fundamentally changing.”
Secret plans by anonymous protesters to break into Heslington Hall on Friday night have been quashed, allowing more constructive campaigning and negotiation to take place.
Rankin told Vision that the campaign was evolving into “a more positive, widespread and long term one which has always been the intention of these initial protests.”
“We have decided that ideas such as to inundate security with key requests would have been detrimental to other students’ welfare. There remains still great opportunities to utilise protests however, and we certainly plan to do so soon. It remains an important means of expressing the strong feelings regarding these cuts and the actions of the University’s management.”
Students plan to continue protesting over the service cuts until Uni bosses agree to bring back 24-hour portering. Sources suggest that there will be weekly protests outside porters’ lodge where campaigners will take on porters’ roles to highlight the job’s importance.
YUSU Campaigns Officer Chris Etheridge said: “I can’t see students backing down on this. Every three years the University attempt to do the same thing.”
So far the protests have collected over 400 signatures and a campaign manifesto is currently being written by YUSU sabbatical officers. 5,000 badges have also been ordered to spread the campaign’s message.
To join the campaign, join the official Facebook group.
Badges- that’ll have the University quaking in their boots! I don’t see what was wrong with the first idea… Much better stories to tell post-uni ‘I broke into Hes Hall’ sounds much more interesting than ‘I pinned on a badge.’
In all seriousness though, I think that the amount of coverage the campus media are giving this is brilliant- and the amount of time and energy protesters are putting in, suggests maybe students aren’t as apathetic as they seem.
Ha, badges…cunning.
Joe Rankin seems to be doing far more than any of the other college chairs. I saw the Halifax one in Ziggys last night, a great help!
It is bizare that only Rankin is doing anything do Vanbrugh and Langwith not care? JCRC Chairs have the most contact with the admin lot and so far they’re just not making use of their power. Shame on them.
To be fair, Derwent and Langwith JCRCs have both played a part in the campaign. Vanbrugh, like Derwent, did a night-long protest outside their porters’ lodge on Wednesday.
I don’t know why it has taken so long for these protests to materialise though. Why weren’t they happening right from the start of term?
Derwent, Langwith and Vanbrugh all had representation at the overnight protest on Wednesday-Thursday: indeed Derwent have been the most active but the others are supporting and assisting the campaigns. JCRC Chairs do have contact with the administration from time to time and I’m certain that they have always said that 24-hour portering is important.
As for the reason that they weren’t happening – the two protests that have had the most impact were the anonymous students removing Derwent Bar and the overnight manning of two empty porters lodges…. neither of which would have had any purpose if there was 24/7 portering (indeed the former wouldn’t have been possible at all – it was a porter who alerted Security to the problem so a permanent presence in Derwent would have instantly responded).
We’re working on a campaign that will *work*. We have been working on this for a long while, have had a lot of meetings, see a lot of problems and shall be working on this until a good resolution comes out of it. Even though it’s taking up massive amounts of the free time of some already busy people!
If you have any suggestions as to ways for improving the campaign (and I stress the words “legally” and “helpfully” in this plea) then I would ask you to email [email protected] and we’ll see how feasible/worthwhile they’ll be… Any and all support is very much appreciated!
it would be interesteing to find out how the langwith porter on duty at night could cope with a constant stream of problems to deal with, going from vanbourgh to derwent and back then to langwith etc….
Why are Langwith protesting? They’re gaining 24hr portering in that area.
Muppets.
Sam, we’re really, really not. As a member of Langwith JCRC, I can wholeheartedly say that Langwith is losing more than it gains from this. We’ve “got 24 hour portering” but in reality what we have is a porter there about half the time between 6pm and 9am. And if we have a problem whilst the porter isn’t there, there isn’t another porter to go to. If we want to get post at 9pm, we could have done so previously but now the porter will be locking up the Derwent and Vanbrugh rooms from society meetings and therefore won’t really be there properly until much later.
Indeed whilst I was at Langwith Porters Lodge overnight, the porter in question finished his “evening rounds” at 10:08pm – and in the 30 minutes before that missed 9 phone calls. Obviously it’s locked so I couldn’t find out who was calling or what the situation is but that’s not great for Langwith students!
Plus when I started as a Langwith Fresher we had 24 hour porters: we need to get it back in all three colleges (and keep it in all of the rest)! So thanks Sam for that…