Success for student protesters (updated)

20th Nov 2009

(On Wednes­day 18th Novem­ber, hun­dreds of stu­dents, staff mem­bers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Social­ist Worker mag­a­zine and the pub­lic ser­vice trade union Uni­son gath­ered in protest out­side the Aston Webb build­ing against the pro­posed clo­sure of the Soci­ol­ogy department.

As Red­brick reported back in Octo­ber, the Soci­ol­ogy Depart­ment was under review after a com­par­a­tively poor RAE score in 2008. On 10th Novem­ber, Pro­fes­sor Edward Peck, Head of Col­lege of Social Sci­ences wrote to the head of the Depart­ment of Soci­ol­ogy to inform him of his deci­sion to rec­om­mend the clo­sure of the depart­ment with the trans­fer­ral of the Soci­ol­ogy BA to the Social Pol­icy depart­ment and the per­ma­nent end to the Media, Cul­ture and Soci­ol­ogy Society degree.

The pro­posal included reduc­ing the num­ber of aca­d­e­mic staff from 17 to 3 and admin­is­tra­tive staff from 3 to 1(over a period of 3 years). The Uni­ver­sity stated that the clo­sure of the depart­ment will not affect the stu­dents already doing their degrees but stu­dents protested say­ing that it is impos­si­ble for staff to teach under such condition.

Jen Michael, 3rd year Media, Cul­ture and Soci­ol­ogy stu­dent said: ‘If they cut staff from 17 to 3 mem­bers they can­not say the teach­ing will not be affected.’

Malia Maia Stone, 1st year Soci­ol­ogy stu­dent added: ‘I do not want my Soci­ol­ogy degree to be taught by non-Sociologists.’ Guild Coun­cil­lor for Soci­ol­ogy, Daniela Kotz­mann, said that the depart­ment is already under strain because of the review and believes that fur­ther cuts will only cause a fur­ther decline in the stan­dard of edu­ca­tion received by Uni­ver­sity of Birm­ing­ham students.

As many staff are fac­ing redun­dancy, there has been wide­spread crit­i­cism of the way the review has been con­ducted and the lack of proper input from stu­dents and staff regard­ing the fate of their department.

An anony­mous Soci­ol­ogy lec­turer said he felt it was ‘scan­dalous’ the way staff and stu­dents were not prop­erly con­sulted and ‘dis­re­spected’ that they were not will­ing to lis­ten the Department’s suggestions.

Wednes­days protest is one of a series of mea­sures to force the Coun­cil to reject the review and the sug­ges­tions made by Pro­fes­sor Peck, includ­ing a peti­tion against clo­sure which had over 5600 sig­na­tures as of Wednes­day and a Face­book group called SAVE BIRMINGHAM SOCIOLOGY. Next Thurs­day to coin­cide with the pro­posal being voted on by the Coun­cil a mock funeral pro­ces­sion is being organ­ised by the ‘Keep Soci­ol­ogy at Birm­ing­ham’ cam­paign to march around cam­pus to sym­bol­ise the ‘Death of Sociology’.

Late on Wednes­day it was announced that the Vice Chan­cel­lor guar­an­teed ‘that all options, not just clo­sure, will be given equal con­sid­er­a­tion in the con­sul­ta­tion period’ and that ‘all options will be on the table come the final deci­sion in April..‘These rec­om­men­da­tions will be put to the Uni­ver­sity Coun­cil on Thurs­day 26th November.

There will be a full fol­low up piece on the Senate’s rec­om­men­da­tions and the new con­sul­ta­tion process avail­able on the web­site soon.

UPDATE: In light of the news of the recent death of a Uni­ver­sity of Birm­ing­ham stu­dent, and with deep­est sym­pa­thy and respect to his friends and fam­ily, the Save Our Soci­ol­ogy cam­paign will not be hold­ing a ‘mock funeral pro­ces­sion’ around cam­pus next Thurs­day. For more infor­ma­tion on the planned events please visit the SAVE BIRMINGHAM SOCIOLOGY Face­book page and look out for fly­ers next week detail­ing planned action for Thurs­day 26th November.