NUS plans another protest
Leonardo Da Vinci once said “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence”. In a previous job, I often said that ‘it’s harder for me to fix something if no-one tells me it’s broken’. Both of those quotes can mean that in order to get change, you have to create a presence and the National Union of Students clearly feel that another protest will achieve this. In the past I have been critical of that organisations approach to protests as it has often seemed reactionary and favoured ahead of reasonable debate and the suggestion of alternatives.
Anyway, the protest is part of a long term strategy/campaign which is critical about the Coalition’s changes to Higher Education. It will take place on November 21st in London, so there’s plenty of time for member unions to get organised (please note – for those who don’t know, not all student unions are members of the NUS).
The video
This video was broadcast at a Further Education Leadership event as Liam Burns (NUS President) was unable to attend. It’s objectives were to say when and why the protest is happening. Unfortunately, despite the short length, there are many things wrong with it and highlights some flaws in his/the organisation’s thought process.
First of all, there is the production values. Whilst some might not think this is a primary issue, it’s important to remember that the sound quality has to be good for everyone to hear the message. The video quality also has to be good because if it’s put on a bigger screen (which it might have been at the event) it may appear ‘blocky’ and distorted. Not everyone is willing to watch low quality videos. If that happened in this case, the importance of the message doesn’t get across to as many people. However, the video length was about right. It doesn’t need to be too or viewers could get bored and their attention would be diverted.
Then there’s the dialogue. Burns sounded confident and was using plenty of the expected buzzwords. Clearly, there has been some form of rehearsal. However, I wonder exactly how much work went into writing the speech.
Near the start, he said that what he had to talk about was both “exciting and important”. Yes, the issue may be important, but is a supposedly ‘failing’ Coalition approach to HE ‘exciting’? That’s the sort of word you’d use to describe a computer game, sport, or theme park ride.
The next part was clearly targeted at the FE audience. Burns said EMA has been “stolen” and tuition fees have been “tripled”. It’s a clever use of soundbites. However, I have discussed the tuition fees issue before and I stand by my position that a lot of the criticism is over the top and not enough people have looked at the detail.
Then there was a rather confusing statement. Burns said that “we don’t even have the safety net of pensions”. This is clearly related to the public sector pensions reform (which I have also mentioned on this blog in the past). However, the statement is completely wrong. It’s a scare tactic to make the more uninformed think the all pensions have ceased to exist, when this is blatantly not true.
“It’s about time we started setting the agenda, not reacting to it” is also an odd statement to make in this situation because surely a protest or demonstration is a reaction to events or actions.
My personal favourite quote is the following:
“We need to know from you what is it that your students on your campus are really angry about, what is it that you need from us to make sure that this is a moment a generation will never forget”
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