By Tom Wills
The Badger
15th January 2007
University management is threatening students with disciplinary proceedings and legal action for taking part in a protest in the Library last year.
USSU President Dan Glass has hit back, accusing management of trying to suppress free speech.
A letter sent to fifty students over the Christmas holidays warns, “the University is currently taking steps to identify individuals who were part of the unlawful occupation, following which it may instigate internal disciplinary proceedings and/or seek to action through the courts.” The letter is signed by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor. The recipients are invited to fill in a reply slip if they wish to deny that they were present in the library after closing time, when the protest took place.
It is thought that the University obtained the names of the students who were in the Library on the night in question by looking at records of who had swiped their Library cards through the barriers after 9pm.
The protest took place in Week Nine last term and demanded longer library opening, more contact hours with lecturers, and an end to the Vice-Chancellor’s support for top-up fees. Management allege that the protest was “threatening” to library staff but organisers say the protest was announced in advance, peaceful, and caused no disruption to the running of the University – taking place from library closing time until the next morning.
The University had obtained a county court injunction in an attempt to outlaw the protest, at a cost of many thousands of pounds. It is unclear whether the University’s threat to pursue students for breaking this injunction has a sound legal basis. However the possibility of disciplinary proceedings remains open.
Alex Sassmannshausen was one of the students who received the letter: “I couldn’t believe it. The University obviously has no interest in giving us what we want, but would rather intimidate us into silence. We should be starting the new term focussing on our studies instead of worrying about being sued by our own university.”
Dan Glass, president of University of Sussex Students’ Union, was critical of the stance taken by management: “This is a shameful attempt to stifle dissenting voices in the student body. Management should be listening to the demands instead of indulging in political point-scoring at the expense of students.”
Responding to the charge that the university was trying to stifle free speech, Paul Layzell, Deputy Vice-Chancellor said, “That's not true, that's not the objective. The objective is to deal with the considerable inconvenience caused to hard-working library staff as a result of the occupation.”
Similar tactics by Lancaster University in 2005 attracted widespread condemnation when it pressed charges against six students who had protested peacefully against a conference on campus involving corporations linked to the arms trade. The so-called “George Fox Six” were convicted of Aggravated Trespass and each given an 18-month conditional discharge and fines totalling £3600.
If disciplinary proceedings go ahead, it will not be the first time Sussex University has taken such action against dissenters. In February 1968, two students were suspended for two months for taking part in a demonstration against the presence of US troops in Vietnam in which red paint was thrown over a visiting American embassy official.
The student union urges any student concerned about disciplinary proceedings to contact the Student Advice Centre in Falmer House.
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Background information for the campaign to defend 80 students, who occupied the University of Sussex library in a peaceful protest in November 2006, against the threat of legal action by the university
