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In this issue: editorial, campus tour, unsafe teaching spaces, call for contributors, honorary graduates, lost and found, paying for empty rooms, Galgate by-pass, bus report, widden’s review, no letters.
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EDITORIAL
And so we find ourselves in the strangest academic year that any Lancaster colleague, alumnus or emeritus will be able to recall. Whilst subtext usually takes some time off during the summer holiday, our hiatus this year means we have missed out on an awful lot since our previous June missive.
The campus is again abuzz with student activity, albeit confined primarily to a handful of increasingly-chilly outdoor seating areas. We have one fewer honorary graduate and one more Pro-Chancellor; LUSU has a full complement of officers again, but no money and no nightclub. We’ve settled into yet another new normal
just in time for the government to declare a new new normal
, whilst promising an even newer normal to come.
Plus ça change
, however. Many of the issues that led to last year’s strikes have yet to be addressed. It is perhaps now, more than ever, that the actions of university management must be held up to the greatest scrutiny, particularly as hard decisions may have to be made in order to safeguard its financial future (or, for the cynical, long-desired changes are brought in under the guide of post-pandemic necessity).
We do not envy the position of those who will have to make such decisions, but we do pledge to do our best to ensure that they are made with due care, justification and transparency, as (we are sure) will you all.