We are seeing a clear picture of what our collective future as students should look like. What does this mean for us as students?
We're approaching the end of the spring term, and for many of us this means a well-deserved break before the summer term (and, of course, exam season). But while we’re not supposed to be paying attention, our university is being changed to be unrecognisable.
It is then time to reflect on what we've learned this term and prepare for what's ahead.
We now have a clear picture of what our collective futures as students are supposed to look like:
A new round of voluntary severance for our lecturers has been announced, reminiscent of the starting weeks of the last botched transformation programme.
The cohort of MA Art & Politics is currently campaigning against the planned closure of their course. They're not in a unique situation. Many of us are on small courses, now unwanted by the institution. We're facing closure or mergers in the same round as them; we just might not know it yet.
Why?
Because our lecturers have been asked not to tell us. We, as students, are supposed to not know enough or care enough about our own educations to be allowed to have a say.
This disruption affects everyone, especially those who are planning on graduating this year and as a consequence, they may not be able to.
We're overworked, surviving a nationwide cost-of-living crisis and faced with the worst graduate outcomes in generations, even in sectors like computing, which only a couple of years ago were hiring in droves. Many of us would be financially better off not having attended university at all.
So why are we here in the first place?
Some of us, because we believed the lines about employment opportunities and social mobility, or we had no choice but to believe it.
Some of us, because we saw an escape from the grinding down of ourselves in the rest of everyday life.
Some of us, because we care about education for its own sake.
Some of us, because it was simply the thing to do after finishing college.
Some of us, because in university life we saw an opportunity, a glimpse of a better world.
But all of us will walk away from Goldsmiths with new friends, having seen and heard new ideas. Having learned, taught, socialised, and grown into people we never would have otherwise.
And hopefully, we walk away with an understanding that a better world is possible if we fight for it.
This is what is at stake with these changes. We as students are supposed to accept that the rich diversity of perspectives and the history of critical and radical thought that we're surrounded by ought to be flattened to only the most mechanical exchange of money for a degree.
Is it really getting our money's worth if the premise on which this whole idea is built, that we will have good job prospects afterwards, is false? They are selling us a lie, and to do it, they're destroying every part of this institution that calls them out on it, that offers an alternative. They're selling us out for nothing.
The only alternative is us. We're still the ones paying; they have to listen to us. But our voices have to be loud enough; this is an opportunity for us, students, to come together, to uphold each other and to save our education, to define our collective futures.
We would therefore like to invite you to the staff and student meeting on Friday 27 March, 1pm in the SU Lounge
To share our struggles and organise.
We have nothing to lose and a world to win.