In the same issue subtext revealed that college Assistant Deans were to henceforth be retained on HR contracts, making them subject to employment law and receiving salaries, rather than holding ‘office’ and receiving a rent rebate. There were questions raised as to whether Assistant Deans would be better or worse off under the new system, and we hope to answer them once it has been in place for a few months.
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/26/the-spend-justifies-the-deans/
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Posted in history
The University of Lancaster is preparing to undertake another staff survey. In order to ensure that the responses are as positive as possible, we at subtext would like to take a look back at where we went wrong in 2017-18 and offer some pointers. We could start by not doing any of the following…
In subtext 166, we reported that the Dean of FASS had drawn up a new procedure for appointing heads of department. This began in the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion, whose natives expressed a clear preference for their next Head of Department (HoD). Dissatisfied with their choice, the Vice-Chancellor decided that future HoD’s should all be professors, and that he should have a direct say in their appointment. The VC’s micromanagement of appointment processes when he doesn’t like a particular candidate, no matter how far down the pecking order they are, is nothing new. But in this case, insisting that HoD’s must be professorial is not only a slap in the fact to the non-professorial staff who have led departments over the years, it also prevents junior (i.e. below professor) academics from developing their experience, and dries up opportunities for women and BME groups, who make up a very small portion of the professoriate at Lancaster.
Then again, being a professor automatically makes you a better candidate for the post of HoD. You only have to look at our report in subtext 167 on the HoD who called an all-staff meeting, at which he berated and humiliated the Criminology personnel in front of the entire Law School, threatening them with closure if they didn’t drive up admissions. With morale boosting like that, it’s little wonder that Criminology at Lancaster is rated 1st in the Times Good University Guide.
Elsewhere, staff members on grade 6 and below were pleased to learn that their bus passes were now 30% more expensive. While this is a negligible amount for those on higher grades, the twenty six quid increase is going to be felt by those who aren’t. The situation is worse for staff on short term contracts, who often are employed on a termly / monthly basis, aren’t entitled to full year bus passes, and therefore have to buy a one term Unirider for a hundred quid. Three times a year if their contracts are extended. And none of these passes entitle them to travel to university during the vacation weeks.
It’s yet another blow to staff on precarious contracts, who make up 65.9% of our workforce. International staff make up a large part of this figure – our report in subtext 178 demonstrated that many of them declined to go on strike for fear of deportation.
Still. At least we can all get on with our research – something which the faculties are keen to help us to do. How? Well, as reported in subtext 179, the Faculty of Science and Technology aims to do this with Research Impact Fund Sub-Committees, scrutiny panels made up of academics often with different specialties to those in the research they’re scrutinising, who decide which academics win five thousand pounds to track their impact. It’s good to free up time to research, isn’t it?
The subtext collective tries to stay aware of the challenges and concerns facing our friends and colleagues who work with us at the university, because we believe our primary purpose is to provide a voice for staff to air those concerns. We think that we did this rather well in 2017-18, and you can read all of it via the links below.
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/10/12/hod-carrying/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/11/23/clod-hopping-hod-dropping/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/10/26/lessons-in-how-not-to-do-things/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/10/12/non-flexible-benefits/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/24/deep-dive-casualisation-and-precarious-working-practices/
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Posted in history
Tagged ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18, buses, casualised staff, criminology, HoDs, hostile environment, impact, precarity, staff survey
Part I study was a brief feature at the start and end of subtext’s academic year. In issue 168, we reported on a serious proposal to drastically limit the amount of time that students spend on minor subjects, which would impact greatly on departmental budgets and workloads. If implemented, it would require a 2019 start. We returned to the topic in issue 180, where we reported on the abolition of minor talks to new students. A move in a certain direction? We’ll look into it.
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/11/09/end-of-part-one-part-two/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/06/21/a-minor-problem/
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Posted in history
Tagged ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18, Part I
We aren’t so nimbyist as to complain about the eyesore that campus has become or so stupid as to think that building works can be completed without a bit of disruption, but we draw the line at people being unable to work. As reported in subtext 166, Bowland North spent the tail end of summer covered in polythene to be sandblasted, blocking out all natural light. With no warning as to what work was even being done on the building, some staff members rather innocently left their windows open, leading to numerous colleagues spluttering and choking in the dust filled corridors.
Meanwhile, a disabled toilet was carpeted in stone dust and written off for the day, because its window couldn’t close.
But never mind the staff – the university is all about the students, and about providing a top ten educational experience. In the nine-and-a-half-grand-feez climate, students deserve to have their sessions spruced up a bit. Spruced up they most assuredly have been, with the intense seismic episodes, deafening crashes, strange chemical smells, dust showers, and contractors popping in to check the ceilings haven’t caved in proving to be a welcome addition to the learning experience. Yes, Fylde is the place to be if you want your learning to be exciting, but students who find learning boring may have enjoyed their sessions in the Charles Carter building, where a large generator was drowning out everything anyone was saying. In many cases, students and lecturers abandoned their sessions entirely in search of somewhere else. If they fancied moving into Management School Lecture theatres 5-8, they were bitterly disappointed. Apart from some turf being removed, seemingly nothing was done to it for the entirety of Michaelmas term. Why it was completely closed for all of that time, as we reported in subtext 171, was anybody’s guess…
… Until subtext 177, when we revealed that everything stopped because the project turned out to cost more than originally quoted. So work will resume in January 2019. Great. Hopefully they’ll get it right on the second attempt, rather than on the third, which was the case for some paving stones on the south end of campus. Cancelling or suspending part of a vast building project for financial reasons causes us to question how well this project has been managed. Doing so to make sure campus is going to be at all navigable by the start of 18-19, as is the case with the cancellation of the ‘Wetlands Bridge’ project near the Charles Carter building, leaves us in no doubt that this has been a logistical cock-up from one end to the other. See our earlier article, DISABILITIES for more commentary on the implications that all of this has had for disabled students.
We at subtext will continue to keep a close eye on how well promises are being kept and deadlines are being stuck to. Until then, please enjoy our efforts to do so from the last year, below.
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/10/12/the-building-plot-thickens/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/10/12/contributed-article-darwin-and-my-trousers/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/10/26/boom-shake-shake-shake-the-seminar-room/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/11/09/shake-rattle-and-roll/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/01/18/nurse-the-screens/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/02/01/a-dispatch-from-the-front-line/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/02/15/is-it-safe/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/03/01/tales-from-the-bunker/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/10/notes-from-the-potting-shed/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/10/social-construct/
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Posted in history
Tagged ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18, building work, LUMS Space Programme
We reported, in issue 176, that according to a league table Lancaster has the third worst gender pay gap amongst UK universities. A flurry of committees, working groups, and consultations have been frantically set up in response, and we will cover the progress of the university’s deliberations when subtext springs back into action.
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/26/never-mind-the-gap/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/10/letters-12/
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Posted in history
Tagged ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18, gender equality, gender pay gap
It all started so well for the Students’ Union. In subtext 169 we reported on their campaign against an unnecessary rent increase of up to £249. To make their displeasure known, LUSU set up a stall and put £249 worth of pasta on display. A little gimmicky, we thought, but enough to get the usual ‘our costs are going up and we have the best halls ever anyway’ line trotted out by the university. And so, we sat back, and then… nothing. There was no further campaigning action, no publicity releases about negotiations, and no attempt to actually mobilise students into a General Meeting, or a protest, or anything.
And then the SU was complicit in the abolition of University Court (detailed above under UNIVERSITY COURT), the decision making body with the largest student delegation, the only one to which any student representative could propose motions and policy, and at which students had fought and won against the university.
But the University Court was due to be abolished anyway, and perhaps it wasn’t the best hill for the SU to die on if it wanted to pick more important fights. As the industrial action took hold of the entire higher education sector, and the student body increasingly swayed towards the side of the staff, subtext eagerly awaited the SU’s statement of intent, and its plan of action, before issue 173 went to print. The plan, it transpired, was to ’empower [student] opinion with impartial information.’ Yes. After making clear that it wasn’t best pleased that the action was going ahead, the SU decided that it wasn’t even going to OPPOSE it. Instead, it put out some tepid ‘on the one hand this and on the other hand that’ infographics. Thankfully, hundreds of students spontaneously organised, many of whom were heard shrieking with derision at any mention of the SU, joined by striking UCU members.
Even JCR officers weren’t safe. A series of posters denouncing the Vice-Chancellor’s salary and lack of funding for the counselling service quickly disappeared from campus, and LUSU’s higher-ups were reported to have advised the JCR officers responsible to take a different tack, apparently pledging to help ‘broaden’ the campaign and attract wider attention. As we predicted in subtext 177, such a campaign never came to fruition – LUSU simply quashed the activism.
LUSU might have made better decisions, be it on Grad Ball (which this year was cancelled for the first time since the 1970s), opposing strike action, or allowing fascism on campus to be funded, if it were more accountable to students, and hadn’t gutted almost all of its accountability structures in 2015 (as we recalled in issue 174). Could LUSU’s ‘scrutiny panel’ have curbed this behaviour? No. In subtext 174, we noted that the ‘scrutiny panel’ hadn’t met at any point during the nine months that the sitting sabbatical team had held office, and was denounced by a former appointee for producing toothless reports that ‘nobody reads.’ Perhaps a General Meeting of the student body could have passed policy? Not a chance – LUSU’s General Meeting failed to reach quoracy, because they failed to seize the enthusiasm around the rent increase in the first term, or the industrial action in the second term to drive attendance. In lieu of a quorate General Meeting, LUSU instead held an ‘online general meeting’, which is completely unconstitutional and has zero powers to authorise LUSU to do anything.
There must have been SOMETHING keeping LUSU’s political wing busy, because one now-former officer appeared on Bailrigg FM back in May boasting to a Labour Party representative that by-election turnout was healthy because LUSU had bothered to do a bit of promotional work, even though it ‘isn’t their job’ (it is).
subtext keeps a close eye on all of the university’s most influential wings, and the SU is one of them. You can read all of our reporting on the SU’s activities throughout 2017-18, which is far more detailed than our VERY brief recap, below.
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/11/23/the-rent-is-too-damn-high/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/02/01/court-the-final/ |
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/02/15/student-citizens-advice-bureau/|
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/02/15/student-activism-shows-some-signs-of-life/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/03/01/special-report-scrutiny-mutiny/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/03/01/analysis-lusu-elections/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/03/15/lusu-news/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/26/gradballs/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/26/sufferin-succofash/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/26/general-fiasco/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/10/poster-boy/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/24/democracy-does-good/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/24/general-knowledge/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/24/sheer-brass-balls/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/06/07/another-glorious-victory-for-subtext/
***
STOP PRESS – ALL IS FORGIVEN, LUSU!
That was then. This is now. subtext is pleased to report that the new team of LUSU full-time officers seem to have got off to a blistering start, by calling a student demonstration against the proposed introduction of 6pm to 7pm lectures, during this Saturday’s Undergraduate Open Day. The details:
https://lancastersu.co.uk/articles/join-our-teaching-hours-protest
Don’t miss your Week 1 subtext for our full report on the ‘extended teaching day’ proposals, including why you shouldn’t dramatically increase your undergraduate numbers without also dramatically increasing your lecture theatres, and why this problem isn’t going to go away any time soon.
Comments Off on THE STUDENTS’ UNION
Tagged ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18, democracy, extended teaching day, Grad Ball, LUSU, rent, strike, student activism, University Court, VC pay
In issue 175, we reported that a University Council approved policy to allow postgraduate students to remain with their undergraduate colleges had not been implemented… three years after it was passed. Perhaps another gentle reminder is in order at some point in subtext’s next run.
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Posted in history
Tagged ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18, colleges, LUSU, postgraduate
Far be it from the subtext collective to be inward-looking and disinterested in the goings on at other universities. Thanks to a source, we have frequently been able to attain private email exchanges between Mike M. Shart, the Vice-Chancellor of Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U), and various members of his staff. They paint a picture of a university in more scandalous times than our own.
In subtext 166, we revealed Prof Shart’s jubilation at LuVE-U being named Racing Post ‘University of the Year’, a clear act of aggression in response to Lancaster’s being named University of the Year by the Times. LuVE-U did differ from Lancaster in its response to Chris Heaton-Harris’s McCarthyite requests for Brexit teaching materials, by happily passing over the information. Like Lancaster, LuVE-U increased its on campus rents in 2017, and as our report in subtext 169 showed, Prof Shart’s response to student complaints was to highlight that their accommodation was still cheaper than at the Ritz Hotel.
The emails in our possession also reveal the shocking ineptitude of his staff, particularly his director of marketing (whose title seems to change on a weekly basis) Hewlett Venklinne, who was revealed to spend little time in his office despite being copied into nearly ALL of Prof Shart’s correspondence. Eventually, Venklinne was sacked by Shart for telling a Times journalist that he was sympathetic to striking academic staff. He went one further, and openly berated staff in an audio interview with LuVE-U’s student media (the first time we have heard Prof Shart’s voice in the three years we have been covering his activities). His Pro-Chancellor, Lord Rod E. L. Girdle, was revealed to have sent drunken emails suggesting that the disgraced ‘journalist’ Toby Young be appointed to LuVE-U’s University Council, something which Prof Shart seemingly welcomed. Shart’s gullibility was brought into even sharper relief when he was revealed to have taken lessons in public engagement from a notoriously slippery, superficially charming and dishonest Lune Valley County Councillor.
subtext prides itself on the fascinating light that our coverage has shed on the machinations of Lune Valley Enterprise University, and you can read all of it below.
Dear subtext,
The so-called Gender Pay Gap is, in fact, a Sex Pay Gap and the efforts that the university are suggesting around maternity and childcare are woefully inadequate, the latter mainly consisting of signposting things that are already available (though in the case of preschool childcare, pretty inadequate – it’s impossible, for example, to get additional hours/days at the Preschool Centre if asked to work extra time by one’s department).
The pay gap is in place way before we have children. Women are less mobile due to tending to have professional partners (while men are more likely to have partners in more portable and less professional jobs, since men earn more than their partners across society). Lancaster could make it easier for women to take a job if they have a professional partner, and advertise this. We could make it more flexible to, for example, take a sabbatical or a non-sabbatical career break so partners can move temporarily together. I had a big struggle when I wanted to take two terms’ sabbatical because it was the right time for my husband and me – he’d just been made redundant but apparently ‘we don’t do that in Psychology, we only take a full year’. One male colleague on hearing this said ‘oh I suppose my wife just gave up her job when I went on sabbatical’.
Women have more other caring responsibilities, not just children. My husband and I needed to stay locally for a number of years – at a time when other colleagues were getting promoted by moving jobs – because my husband’s mother was elderly and needed care. Few men help with care of their mother in law because that’s not what they’ve been taught since childhood.
Travel for work is often impossible for women with caring responsibilities – I couldn’t really travel for the first couple of years after we had children and the only reason I can now is because my husband’s work has become more flexible, not my job (he’s gone part time through choice but also his employer has pushed and enabled working from home a lot more. There’s been no change at all in the help Lancaster has given and no substantial change in the availability of childcare). Even a full day travel is impossible for me (London and back in a day for example) if I’m relying on outside childcare. This means not only could I not go to conferences at first but I also couldn’t go to e.g. a government meeting or grant meeting.
Because of Lancaster’s location, talented postgrads who want to stay in the area have to move into a professional services job – there are few commutable academic jobs if you don’t get one in Lancaster. This is more likely to affect women – men just move for work, while women stay put with, as I’ve said, a professional partner, non-childcare responsibilities or children.
Women have always been taught (since birth and, these days, before) that they are supposed to be less assertive. Obviously if you’ve managed to get a job in academia, you must have managed to push yourself forward to some extent. We recently had an excellent small workshop on promotion for women but previously the University has run workshops where at one a female professor just told us ‘it’s easy to be a professor, you just have to publish a lot and get grants’ (I can hear the hollow laughter of men and women echoing round campus!) and at another senior women just said ‘oh I’ve never experienced any discrimination’.
From the moment the doctor says ‘It’s a girl!’ or ‘It’s a boy!’ society treats us differently – our sex determines what gender roles society thinks we should take, following a partner as a trailing spouse, not speaking up to creepy supervisors, not putting ourselves forward for keynotes and promotions, taking on caring responsibilities for older and younger people – and that in turn determines how much we are paid.
Katie Alcock
Psychology
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Posted in letters
Tagged ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18, gender equality, gender pay gap, letter of the year, letters
Dear subtext,
Did you know that the university has changed its policy on eye tests?
When I had my work glasses two years ago, I had a refund of £74 from the university – £24 for the test and £50 for the glasses. I went to my preferred optician which was Specsavers.
Now you have to go through something called SEE to get your voucher. This entitles you to a free eye test but only at the opticians listed, so not my opticians then, which I’ve been going to for years. It also entitles you to a free pair of their frames which quite frankly I wouldn’t be buried in, nor does it seem you can try them on before deciding.
Or – and this is the really shitty part – £25 towards your glasses, that you require to be able to do your job, partly because your eyesight has been wrecked by the tiny text and screenwork that you have been doing for the past 23 years. The two options in Kendal I could use are Boots, their range starts at £50, or Vision Express, and their range starts at £39, so whichever I choose I still have to put money to the glasses that I require to do my job. Interestingly Specsavers start their range at £25 but they aren’t allowed to join the scheme as I’ve been in contact with my branch and they have looked into it.
Thought you might be interested as I’m spitting feathers at this moment in time.
Best wishes for a summer of blindness.
Andrea Kitchen
Timetabling & Room Bookings
***
Dear subtext,
This survey from the group Unis Resist Border Controls researching hostile environment policies in British Higher Education might be of interest to you and your readers. Would encourage folks to fill it in and share it around.
Best wishes,
Toby Atkinson
Comments Off on LETTERS
Posted in letters
Tagged ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18, eye tests, hostile environment, letters
Fortnightly during term time.
Letters, contributions, & comments: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk
Back issues & subscription details: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/about/
In this issue: editorial, welcome week, deanshare, lab location, UA92 galore, FASS typos, house-building, union blues, shart, poem, TV review, letters
*****************************************************
EDITORIAL
Gaps, holes, deficits, cuts, absences. Call them what you will, it would be hard to deny that the academic year has been littered with them, providing the subtext drones with more than enough metaphorical material to stretch to breaking point and enough space to fly the traditional end of year round-up through on a bus.
The biggest gap generator has been the ongoing building work on campus, particularly on the Spine. There have been holes in the ground where the Spine has been dug up, communication gaps where the pink and purple diversion signs have failed to keep up with the actual situation ‘on the ground’, and most worryingly there has been a huge gap in provision for disabled users of the spine, with accessible routes around the pinball game that traversing campus has become having all but disappeared. Add to this the gaps of buildings that failed to appear (squints at the Management School) and the gap we didn’t know we had (cocks an eyebrow at Alexandra Square’s Big Screen), and it’s a wonder we didn’t all get a collective sprained ankle.
There have been financial gaps as well. Students who may have specific learning disabilities have seen a cut of 50% in the funding available from the University to be assessed for them – a massive blow to the life chances of those that need one but can’t afford it. Nationally, the most disruptive gap of the year was the deficit in the UCU pension fund – and understanding thereof – that saw an unprecedented turnout in support of strike action, and UCU members picketing for two weeks in freezing conditions. Whilst the picket lines saw a huge amount of support from students and non-striking staff there was another gap: no clear or coherent response from the VC. The University as a whole continued to fail to cover itself in glory when the Gender Pay Gap report was published in April, revealing LU to be third from the bottom in the country (University of the Year, though!) with a mean pay gap of 27.7% as opposed to the national average of… cough… 17.8%.
There have been notable gaps in democracy, honesty and decency. Maybe it started when Lancaster University Students’ Union refused to take a stance in regard to supporting the UCU strike, and it definitely didn’t end with their ‘creative’ approach to the online AGM ballot. Maybe it started when the University Court was abolished, removing one of the last democratically elected bodies in the institution (and one that oversaw the appointment of various posts). In fact, subtext notes – with some glee – that you can read all about the machinations of Lancaster University’s ‘Strategic Planning & Governance’ division at gap.lancs.ac.uk. Maybe it started when the VC led us to believe that Lancaster was the first port of call for UA92 (it wasn’t) and shrouded the entire business in a cloak of secrecy. Maybe it started with swastikas on Sociology department doors appearing overnight followed by the attempted setting up of a new student society concerned with white supremacy and other alt-right (i.e. fascist) ideas. This is a gap that is going to take more than a bit of polyfilla and a trowel to sort out.
And we’ve been feeling a bit gappy ourselves – retirement and illness have left us short of an editor or two in the subtext warehouse, so we welcome all those readers with a critical eye, a writerly bent and a typing speed of 80wpm to drop us a line at subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk to get involved. And so, once more unto the breach, dear readers – starting October. Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks for writing in – do keep doing that. Failing that, hit us with your ‘like’ stick on our Facebook page, at www.facebook.com/lusubtext
Comments Off on subtext 180 – ‘better sorry than safe’
Posted in editorial
Tagged accessibility, design the spine, disability support, fascists, gender pay gap, Issue 180, LUSU, strike, UCU, University Court
In subtext 168, we reported on ‘A proposal for radical improvement’, drafted by the Dean for Academic Quality. The subtext collective postulated at the time that the implementation of those proposals could have meant the end of Part One at Lancaster. News reaches subtext of another proposal – well, an instruction – from the Dean for Academic Quality that could have further implications for Part One. This concerns Welcome Week activities, whereby it is intended that students will spend an increased amount of time during Welcome Week in their major department. The purpose of this is to help the new students to engage with their academic disciplines at an early stage, so that they can feel more embedded in their academic community. This is seen to be of vital importance, contributing significantly towards high student satisfaction, performance and retention.
To facilitate this bonding experience all minor taster talks, normally delivered on Tuesday of Welcome Week, are to be scrapped. This, we are told, is an idea which has found widespread support throughout the University among academics, professional service staff and the Students’ Union, although subtext is not aware of any consultation fora where this has been discussed.
Minor talks are to go online. Details are sketchy at the moment but subtext understands that the plan is to set up a repository for information about every minor option across the university. This will probably have a standard template as a ‘front page’ for each option, and departments can then add links to anything else they want, which could include readings, handouts, videos etc. It has been made clear to departments that no additional money will be available to facilitate this.
Information for students about how to access this repository will be given to them in their welcome packs, and they will be encouraged to access them before they arrive, with further ‘prompts’ by their major departments when they get here. Let’s hope that these prompts aren’t used to apply pressure to students to choose a particular minor, otherwise the days of Marketing students choosing Criminology or Gender and Women’s Studies as their alternative for Part One may be numbered.
As we pointed out in our initial coverage, a number of departments or degree schemes with small student numbers are very dependent on the revenue that Part One minor students provide. Quite a number of departments welcome face-to-face interaction with potential Part One students and see it as a good recruitment opportunity. Anything that threatens such arrangements should be considered very carefully.
The fact that this proposal apparently emanated from the working group charged with looking at radical improvement set alarm bells off in the warehouse regarding ulterior motives i.e. the dismantling of Part One by the back door. Other wiser heads point out that such joined-up thinking is not normally how the University operates and we should take the proposal for what it is – an attempt to foster greater identification with the students major department and aid retention. Thoughts and letters to the usual address.
The Dean of the Faculty of Science & Technology (FST), Peter Atkinson, is ‘to act as interim Dean of the Faculty of Health and Medicine for a period of up to one year … (to) support the University while it seeks a replacement Dean of FHM’. While such community spirit is to be applauded, a number of questions spring to mind. On the most basic level, subtext has not heard yet how the microbiologists and clinicians of FHM feel about their new computational geographer overlord. According to a recent message from the VC posted on the staff intranet, none of the candidates had the ‘right balance across the wide range of experience and attributes’. What is going on that we can’t attract decent bio-medics? Don’t they know that we are the ‘Times and Sunday Times University of the Year’?
Have YOU got any ideas as to who could head the faculty? We aren’t being facetious – the University welcomes ‘suggestions as to people we should be talking to (sic) in looking for the substantive replacement for Neil.’
More fundamentally, assuming that this is not the start of a Stakhanovite movement amongst middle management types, will the denizens of FST now flounder, bereft of 50% of the guiding wisdom that they previously enjoyed as their Dean turns his attention elsewhere? Or will it turn out that the faculty can run itself happily without the attention of a full time strategic thinker and visionary? Is it even possible that if the time spent in such charades as Dean’s group Departmental visits is squeezed more actual work may get done? Only time will tell how sorely 50% of a Dean will be missed.
In subtext 179 we noted that the new Human Performance Laboratory mentioned in a sits vac for an LU Sports Science Lecturer (and also suspiciously similar to one mentioned in UA92 literature) was to be built at an unspecified site: ‘The Human Performance Laboratory will initially be housed at a separate site which is presently being developed’ and expressed concern that development needed to be PDQ for the first intake in September. Possibly in response to this searing piece of investigative journalism LUText 15th June reported that in fact this separate site is … an extension to the sports centre! ‘The new extension will temporarily accommodate a Human Performance Lab to support research and learning around the newly introduced Sports Sciences degree. The Human Performance Lab will move to the new Health Innovation Campus (HIC) in 2020.’ So why the mysterious reference to an undisclosed separate site when the HIC(up) is referred to elsewhere in the advert? Could it be that the final decision regarding the location (which should ideally be equally accessible for both LU and UA92) was not actually taken until after the advert had been written? Is it possible that the visionary planning had omitted an actual location for a heavily advertised facility? Surely not – that would be like opening a chemistry department without deciding where to build the labs before the students started!
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Tagged Health Innovation Campus, Human Performance Laboratory, Issue 180
GARY ON AT YOUR CONVENIENCE
In subtext 179, we reported on the somewhat embarrassing lack of solid information on simple things like UA92’s disability provision, placements, and whether or not they’ll be taking international students. Thankfully, a public consultation with Stretford community stakeholders was held last Monday (18th June), and there were high hopes that the community liaison representative dispatched by the council to answer to concerned residents would be able to bring some much needed clarity.
UA92 is a done deal that was signed off by Trafford’s Conservative administration before the Tories were replaced by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. While the conversion of the Turn Moss green space into a training facility for UA92 students was immediately torpedoed, it remains to be seen how readily the new administration will nod through Gary’s plans. The only accepted planning application thus far is to convert the old Kellogg’s building into educational and office space, and two more ‘masterplans’ – one for Stretford town centre and one for the Trafford ‘civic quarter’ – are to be put forward for consultation in the coming months. Furthermore, plans to hand Stretford’s leisure centre over to Gary have been mooted.
So, we know what isn’t happening, and what is definitely probably going to hopefully happen. At present, there is no information on what sites, apart from the old Kellogg’s building, are in place. Stretford residents were sympathetic to the human shield that the council had dispatched to the meeting, who was clearly poorly briefed, working on little information, and was not joined and supported by any figures with direct involvement in the planning and implementation of UA92. To surmise – UA92 has teaching and office space confirmed, partnerships with Microsoft and Lancashire Cricket Club and… that’s it. We wonder if things are going to be any clearer come the UA92 open day in July. subtext understands that two Lancaster student staff are being deployed as ambassadors to answer questions. Have they been warned, in the two non-compulsory training sessions, that many of the attendees are likely to be concerned Stretford residents masquerading as students and parents with a wad of questions that thus far haven’t been adequately answered either by council liaison officers or full time staff at the university?
The fact that, as reported in subtext 171, no-one has been willing to release the market research that lead everyone to decide that UA92 was a cracking idea is important to remember. If no-one wants to come to the party, there is the chance that UA92 might end up as a white elephant. And yet, they have so little to offer right now, be it provision, accommodation, or any of the superb facilities that are promised in the hype videos, that it’s hard to see why anyone WOULD come to UA92.
Only four months until applications open!
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IMPRESSIONABLE MINDS
The promotional video of what UA92’s ‘campus’ is going to look like (or to use the exact quote, ‘might’ look like) consists of shots of Manchester Piccadilly Station, the Manchester skyline and Old Trafford football ground, overlaid by an intense dubstep beat and meaningless slogans to make up for a lack of content. Oh, the camera also soars through a CGI rendition of an extremely red, cavernous building that looks like a cross between a 60s themed American diner and a missile launch facility. For those still wondering what UA92 is even going to offer, it’s better than nothing, and the start of the video reminds us to ‘speak to a member of the UA92 team for the latest information.’ Ahem. https://youtu.be/vhULu8sD1Is
We are also told that ‘designs continue to be developed and further details will be available in 2019.’
Only four months until applications open!
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PLACES FOR PEOPLE
At a recent meeting of the Stretford & Urmston Constituency Labour Party, it was noted that the Labour administration has asked that the office space being sold off as accommodation for potential UA92 students be made viable as 1 or 2 bedroom flats for general use in case the Students Don’t Come. This could prove problematic: at the moment, building student accommodation is hugely attractive to developers because student houses don’t have to meet the same regulations as normal housing. Less red tape and fewer regulations, coupled with a potentially huge market, means more money in the pockets of the developers. This presents some interesting questions – will developers take the risk and refurbish the old office blocks to a minimum standard, confident that the Students Will Come? And if they don’t, will they even be able to convert the empty student housing into normal housing that satisfies the additional regulations, or will logistics, money, and disinclination leave more disused space in Manchester?
Only four months until [we get it – eds.]
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SETTING THE BAR
As we’ve established, Gary is having difficulty finding buildings to house the millions of students and partners falling over themselves to work with him.
By a sheer stroke of luck, his ‘Polynesian cocktail bar,’ ‘Mahiki’, is to close after less than a year of trade. The Manchester branch of the London venue (a famous celebrity haunt which has even attracted royals), which charges a tenner for entry, £12 a cocktail, hosts parties for celebrities and whose opening night was attended by David Beckham, was promised by Gary to be ‘the opposite of pretentious.’ It was also the opposite of ‘good’, and attracted scathing reviews variously describing the venue as ‘tragic’, the staff as ‘rude’, and the experience the ‘worst night out in Manchester ever.’ Since Gary has already signed a 20-year lease on the building, there is no reason not to see if he can’t squeeze a couple of 3G pitches in there.
In our piece on the forthcoming REF we reported that FASS apparently likes impact from ‘mew’ projects. A small but dedicated number of subscribers asked subtext to explain. Our first thoughts were that this was simply an acronym. Marketisation Educational Work. Multinational Experimental Writing. Multi-agency Economy Waffle.
Research was clearly needed, so we knuckled down and spent almost two minutes on the Googles in search of the answers. In turns out that those folk in FASS are really at the cutting edge in terms of the up-to-the-minute state of the art research trends. Mew projects are the very latest in cross disciplinary developments involving cyberspace research, sociology, spirituality and anthropological work. ‘Mew is … pink, bipedal … with mammalian features. Its snout is short and wide, and it has triangular ears and large, blue eyes. It has short arms with three-fingered paws, large hind legs and feet with oval markings on the soles, and a long, thin tail ending in an ovoid tip. Its fur is so fine and thin, it can only be seen under a microscope. Since Mew can make itself invisible at will, very few people have knowingly seen it, leading some scientists to declare it extinct and most to assume it to be a mirage.’ claim various Pokémon websites.
Or has FASS teamed up with Mew Developments, a chartered building company which has been delivering superior building projects in and around the Lyme Regis area for over 20 years?
Excited by the new ‘disruptive’ turn taken by FASS, we were somewhat deflated to discover that it was merely a typo on their webpage – it should have read ‘new’ projects!
Mary Rose’s letter on Bailrigg Garden Village (see below) offers a counter to subtext’s mildly optimistic tone. As Prof Rose reminds us, many Galgate residents are unconvinced that city council planners are taking their concerns about future development – on traffic, air quality and especially flooding – seriously.
The city council planning committee’s recent decision to permit development at Ward Field Farm has particularly annoyed villagers. Ward Field Farm is on your left as you leave Galgate on the A6 northbound and its land abuts the north bank of the River Conder. Given the ongoing serious risk of flooding, one might expect an application to build houses there to receive short shrift. Not so. The landowner now has permission to build up to 68 houses on the site and the tenant farmer faces eviction.
Conveniently for the landowner, Ward Field Farm lies just outside the Bailrigg Garden Village zone – if it lay within the zone then permission would probably have been refused, since the plans for Bailrigg make clear the importance of protecting the ‘buffer’ between Galgate and Lancaster, and not doing anything to increase the flood risk.
But surely, given that every other square inch of land between Lancaster and Galgate comes under the remit of the garden village consultation, it’d be premature, to say the least, to let a developer build on Ward Field Farm before the final shape of the garden village is known? Not so – as the council officers reminded the planning committee, ‘refusal of planning permission on the grounds of prematurity will seldom be justified where a draft Local Plan has yet to be submitted for examination.’ In other words, until we finalise the Local Plan, it remains open season in places like Ward Field Farm. Ho hum.
Hence the vote by 6 (Labour) to 5 (Conservatives and Greens) to approve the development plans. Read all about it at https://committeeadmin.lancaster.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=39599
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KEEPING IT CLASSY
Presented with such an open goal, how have the Conservatives been behaving? We’re pleased to report that their opposition campaign has so far been robust and dignified, with one of their more colourful councillors berating Lancaster & Fleetwood MP Cat Smith this week in a self-penned press release that subtext was lucky enough to receive directly from the author. Blaming the MP for Labour councillors proposing to build ‘thousands more houses in Galgate’ (‘thousands’ meaning ’68’), the press release lamented her ‘refus[al] to meet with her residents from the CLOUD campaign’, and slammed her as ‘out of touch’ and an ‘absent MP.’
On an entirely unrelated note, subtext would like to send its best wishes to the ‘absent’ Cat Smith, who is heavily pregnant and awaiting the imminent birth of her first child.
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Tagged Bailrigg Garden Village, development, flooding, Issue 180, local politics