from the comments at the New Statesman

Here are the first two comments to that NEW STATESMAN PIECE.

Both commenters make excellent points.

As for Jakobin’s comment, everyone knows that If you want “assaults and injuries” to carry any weight for disciplinary purposes, then a valid complaint must be made to the police that such assaults and injuries have occurred. But my understanding is that every time the police have been called to the Middlesex campus, they have quickly departed after determining that no illegal behavior had occurred. And it would be unlike the police not to follow up on any legitimate complaints of “assaults and injuries.” Hence, the present evidence suggests that such assaults and injuries are a mere fiction being used as an argumentative bargaining chip.

And as for suicideally’s comment, it’s true that no consideration has been shown to those students who are entirely dependent on Hallward, Kerslake, and Osborne for the completion of their studies. And furthermore, I have heard no credible reports of “forcible entry” into the Library. The students simply remained there after hours: basic sit-in tactics widely familiar since the 1960’s, not violent action of any sort.

It sounds to me like the Middlesex administration is scraping the bottom of the barrel in their efforts to find some petty transgression of the previous court injunction in order to justify the suspensions. Even the police did not think the Mansion Building injunction covered the Library. That’s why they left the scene shortly after surveying it.

2 comments from readers
Jakobin
25 May 2010 at 15:42
The statement from the ‘board of governors’, which includes the Vice-Chancellor – Mr. Michael Driscoll – who has already made these unfounded allegations of criminal behaviour in the past continues to be based on fiction and not fact at every level. Funny how the police didn’t try to interview anyone about those ‘assaults and injuries’ isn’t it? Instead they explicitly said that they weren’t getting involved because no criminal action had transpired.

This is about the right to protest. Our protests are not illegal and Mr. Driscoll cannot change that in his delusional proclamations.

suicideally
25 May 2010 at 16:18
Forcibly entered the building? A bunch of philosophy students and some staff from other courses at the School of Arts and Education sitting around in the library and refusing to leave when it closed counts as forcible now, does it?

A further point to note is that management didn’t communicate the suspensions to students affected by the suspension of their tutors (e.g. students with MA dissertation proposals due in the next two weeks); we had to find out via the grapevine. We receive no adequate communication from management, just slurs and falsehoods.