Forceful Eviction

[lylethelion]

BAD HIPPIES

[Multiplexed]

epic trolls

[yourapocalypse]

I don't feel "right" unless I do "this" in comment "feeds" from now "on". Anyway, Chris is right (not a common trait, but then he usually argues with people smarter than him). Just because people are against the protest doesn't mean they're against the "concept" (there, did it again) of protest.

Someone put it best on the other thread, they could have done more with four days of fundraising, and not had people on the internet call them idiots.

[ChrisEmerson]

"but then he usually argues with people smarter than him"

Not possible, surely? :P

[ChrisEmerson]

I'm pretty sure I can live with calling these people morons. IT seems somehow you've decided that means I'm not against the attacks on Gaza, but that's where wild assumptions get you.

[yourapocalypse]

If equipment has been confiscated, then presumably this was done illegally (as opposed to security removing protesters by force, which is legal). Therefore I'd assume this is already a police matter, right?

[ChrisEmerson]

Oh, and security are entitled to use reasonable force to remove people from their property. If people got injured because they were stupid enough to resist, that is their own fault. I fail to see in this video how the security staff are using so much force as to cause that response though, it's not as though they are beating him (which WOULD be assault - learn the difference).

[hackfresse2011]

they were using enough force to break someone's belt

[CuriousJ80]

OMG, a belt! The most hardy of all clothing! If you resist to the point where they are forced to drag you out by your belt, it's hardly surprising if it snaps.

[ChrisEmerson]

Have you got any evidence of the belt breaking? All I can see is a lot of shout, but no evidence at all. Seems like you are trying to hype the situation up a lot for no good reason other than to try and cause trouble for the university, or to get some attention from the media.

Sad.

[ChrisEmerson]

No, it comes down to taking appropriate action. Instead of feeling all nice and fuzzy and warm because you sat in a building for 3 days, why not take some real action instead? The protest was out of order, and dare I say, a disproportionate response to something the university has no control over.

Add that to the fact that you are illegally invading and occupying a building that is someone else's property, to protest against an invasion and occupation of another piece of land

Oh, the irony...

[domfox]

I think you are deeply confused about the character of the power relationships involved here. If the students had occupied the building with tanks and helicopter gunships, you might perhaps have had a point.

As it was, they occupied and protested peacefully, without violence or the threat of violence. They did so in order to compel the university to change some things that it certainly does have control over: its public statements, its investments, its use of funds to provide scholarships.

[ChrisEmerson]

You still occupied a building that is not yours, without permission.

You have no right to compel the university to change anything, and tacking on a ridiculous protest about Starbucks lost you even more credibility.

You were offered the chance to talk to some senior management on Friday night, and yet you ignored this and refused to move. Seems to me like you weren't actually interested in changing anything at all, just protesting for the sake of it, otherwise you would have taken that offer.

[domfox]

I personally was nowhere near the building; I'm one the occupation's very many non-student supporters, a thirty-something father of two with what you would probably refer to as "a proper job".

You might care to wonder why so many people outside that lecture theatre, from university lecturers to market traders, supported the students' actions and were disgusted by the thoughtless, macho repression with which they were met.

[ChrisEmerson]

Repression? Give me a break. The university were good enough to let the protest carry on over the weekend and overnight, when the building should have been empty, but they were completely right to stop it disrupting the education of others any further.

The number of supporters, both student and lecturers, were a tiny proportion of the total students & lecturers of the university, so no, I don't wonder at all.

[domfox]

You're entitled to your incuriosity, but I think you're going to be unpleasantly surprised by the amount of fuss there's going to be about this. Not everyone identifies with authority, or is content to parrot its self-justifications, quite so readily or wholeheartedly as you seem to.

[ChrisEmerson]

I eagerly await this 'fuss' you talk about :)

I think the police have already made it clear by their actions that they aren't interested in helping a bunch of students who illegally occupied university property, and got hurt because they resisted attempts by security to remove them (after being told to leave twice before).

[yourapocalypse]

Not that this is aimed at you personally, Dom, but I'd suggest that it shows that university lecturers, market traders and fathers can all be as dumb as student protesters.

[domfox]

My point is that the protests aren't simply an expression of "naive student radicalism", but engage with issues which are a matter of concern for a wide range of people.

You may wish to maintain your disengagement, and feel relieved when security guards remove the nuisance from your sight; but for others it is inspiring and encouraging to see that not everyone is as apathetic, incurious and fearful as we are routinely exhorted to be by the guardians of the student/consumer experience.

[yourapocalypse]

Wasn't in my sight, I'm not a student, didn't affect me. In fact I was quite enjoying watching from afar. I'm friends with a lot of students, and I wouldn't consider them apathetic, incurious or fearful. Instead I'd consider them intelligent, reasonable human beings who understand the difference between effective protest and being 'idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

[domfox]

I fear you are misled by stereotypes, and are exercising a spurious entitlement to speech without investigation.

How do you suppose the students spent their time - daubing themselves with coloured paints and chanting pro-Hamas Rugby songs? They organised debates, heard speakers (including one MP), made decisions as a group and invited others to participate.

A great deal was "signified" during this brief flourishing of intellectual autonomy; far more than in most of the seminars I've been in.

[ChrisEmerson]

The activities you do in the room don't excuse the ridiculous demands and disruption of education. They don't make it 'OK'.

[domfox]

Which of the demands was ridiculous, and why? They all seemed eminently reasonable and achievable to me; other universities have agreed to (at least some) similar demands. You seem to have a lamentably diminished sense of the possible.

Whose education was disrupted to any significant extent, and in what respect were the students themselves (rather than the university administration, who cancelled lectures in order to have a pretext for eviction) responsible for that disruption?

Facts, please.

[ChrisEmerson]

"Whose education was disrupted to any significant extent, and in what respect were the students themselves (rather than the university administration, who cancelled lectures in order to have a pretext for eviction) responsible for that disruption?"

They were sitting in the room that was required for the lectures, and had all their stuff there. In what way are they NOT responsible? If they didn't want to disrupt education, why did they choose a lecture theatre to protest in?

[ChrisEmerson]

"Which of the demands was ridiculous, and why?"

Not enough room in a youtube comment really for this.

1 - Not the Uni's responsibility, why should they? Why not petition for MPs to do this instead, people with the power to do something? Why not force other companies / groups to make statements condemning the actions? What good is this going to do?

2 - You disagree with something, others don't. Don't try and force your opinion on others just because you don't like someone else's stance on it.

[ChrisEmerson]

3 - The sole even vaguely sensible suggestion on there.

4 - Why should students be paying for other people's education, in what is effectively a terrorist training ground (to put it lightly)?

5 - What has Starbucks got to do with this? If you want to tack on some rubbish fair trade protest onto this, you lose credibility, and you have no right to restrict other students' choice due to your opinion about them. You go on about freedom of speech/choice, and try and remove that from others?

[ChrisEmerson]

6&7 - These would be against free trade laws, and is a very sweeping generalisation. Just because you don't agree with the ethics of a company doesn't mean you can demand who does and doesn't deal with them. Perhaps we should ban trade with glove manufacturers, because burglars use them to conceal their identity? How about golf club makers - they have been used to kill people before? The SU tried to ban dealings etc with BAe before, and failed, due to free trade laws.

[ChrisEmerson]

8 - Just because you declare something, doesn't make it so. The rules were broken, and so everyone should face the consequences. You cannot just demand that you be exempt from the rules. If you wanted a legal and non disruptive protest, you could protest outside the Portland building instead. It's obvious you wanted to break the rules (And the law), and cause disruption, which is why you used a lecture theatre.

[domfox]

1. It is the university's duty to affirm its fundamental values. The students apparently have a broader and richer sense of what these values are than their university does.

2. Political struggles are not the same as differences of opinion. Political stances are not the same as tastes in music. Political decisions are not the same as consumer choices.

I regard your objection to 4. as contemptibly ill-informed and parsimonious.

About Starbucks, I don't really care either way.

[domfox]

Your argument against 6&7 is fatuous, and implicitly places the value of commercial liberty above all other considerations. By your own reasoning you would have opposed sanctions against Apartheid South Africa.

With respect to 8, "the rules" are not a homogenous ensemble of eternal proprieties. Some can and should at times be broken, without wider harm occurring. Others, such as those governing the conduct of military forces with respect to civilian populations, should be zealously enforced.

[domfox]

Although I sense, at this juncture, a looming inconsistency in your worldview, which is that of habitual authoritarians everywhere. When small people break small rules, they should certainly pay whatever consequences their masters determine satisfactory. When governments and armies break large rules, well - shit happens, and war is hell, and anyway the "terrorists" started it...

[ChrisEmerson]

"When governments and armies break large rules, well - shit happens, and war is hell, and anyway the "terrorists" started it... "

So breaking more rules makes everything OK? It excuses this?

I'm not pro Israel's actions, just against this pathetic attempt at 'Action' (read: sitting in a room for a bit) because it makes the participants feel like they are doing something, when in fact they are achieving sod all (and anyone could have seen that it would achieve nothing from the start).

[ChrisEmerson]

If you had petitioned the university instead, and started a peaceful protest in a lawful way, I'm sure you would have made a lot more progress (or even taken the university up on their offer to talk if you left on Friday night), and it would have been constructive. As it stands, you unlawfully occupied a room, accused security staff of breaking the law when they were doing their job, intentionally caused disruption to other people, and kicked up a huge campaign against the universities actions.

[ChrisEmerson]

[continued from below]

...not to mention feeling fit to issue a set of unreasonable demands to the university after illegally occupying their property.

What have you achieved? Nothing, only turned the university against you and been evicted, because you wanted to kick up a fuss and cause some trouble.

I wonder how many of these morons realise the irony in taking disproportionate action by illegally invading and occupying someone else's property, and then campaigning against the same thing?

[ChrisEmerson]

1 - The university is there to provide education to students, not take political standpoints and preach values.

2 - I agree. Your point? People still end up on either side of a political debate.

4 - The Palestinian leader has a stated policy of attacking Israel at every opportunity, and the Palestinian people voted for this. And you are sitting there trying to defend this? I'm not condoning what Israel are doing, but it's called a war. Countries have them every now and then. Stop taking sides.

[domfox]

If that is the limit of your awareness, then that I suppose is the limit.

Political struggle as "debate"; the life of a university as "provision" to students of their expensively-purchased "education"; the bombing, enforced starvation and attempted politicide of the Palestinian people as a war between two equal "sides", in the teeth of which one should keep the newsreader's smirk on one's face and one's precious impartiality intact...

What can one say to such perfection?

[ChrisEmerson]

I don't know, but any time you want to stop with the pseudo-intellectual nonsense and actually raise some valid points, feel free.

Are you going to answer my points, or just pretend you know how I think and attack my character instead?

[domfox]

It's difficult to express "points" about the value of expressing solidarity with the oppressed, the wider purpose of the university as an institution, the moral narrowness of legalistic authoritarianism or the political impotence of procedures approved of by the very institutions one is trying to change, in the language of consumer choice and commercial interest; and difficult to express anything at all, if any other language than that is scoffed at as "pseudo-intellectual nonsense"...

[domfox]

So no. No thanks. I'm sorry that your tidy little world has been disturbed, sorry that petty rule-breaking upsets you so much and the deliberate starvation of civilians upsets you so little, and sorry that all you can think of to do in the face of courageous political action is sigh "oh, the irony!" and call people "morons"; but that's your decision, and you're the one who's going to have to live with it.

[ChrisEmerson]

Either that person is putting it on for the camera, or he needs to grow a backbone.

As for illegal, do you mean a bit like trespassing on university property and occupying it? The university were well within their rights to remove the protesters.

The demands were ridiculous (with only #3 being sensible), and the people involved should be ashamed for disrupting the education which others have paid for.

I hope the university takes disciplinary action on all the people involved.

[domfox]

"Either that person is putting it on for the camera..."

Or he was in pain, a possibility I think you dismiss rather too glibly.

"Disrupting the education which others have paid for"

It does all, really, come down to money in the end, doesn't it. No other principle or human concern can possibly outweigh the purchasing power of the almighty consumer, who is entitled to the best degree his money can be...

[domfox]

...or buy.

Mind you, I say "his money". Student loan corporation's money is more like it. Nothing like a whopping great debt to set you up for life as an obedient little "resource".

[hackfresse2011]

no obstruction was taking place. All decisions to relocate lectures were taken by the university. and you can't trespass in lecture theaters as a student.

[CuriousJ80]

Where do you idiots get your legal advice? Every time you invoke the law it's even more wrong and ridiculous than the time before. No-one with even basic legal training would argue that students cannot trespass in lecture theatres. Lecture theatres are university property, students have no property rights over them, they are merely licensed to use them. The University can terminate such licences at any time and ask students to leave and if they do not, can use reasonable force to remove them.

[CuriousJ80]

Oh, and as for "aggravated assault" as the moron in the video claims... He may as well accuse the security personnel of committing piracy on the high seas for all the sense such a claim makes in the circumstances...

[CuriousJ80]

What a load of rubbish. The lecture theatre was rendered entirely unusable for lectures and an environment entirely un-conducive to learning created - there were posters, banners, flags - some that would undeniably cause offence - on every wall and window. Would you have taken them all down for every lecture? And what about those lectures when there isn't a spare seat - your stuff and you were spread out across the room. No-one is buying your BS claims that the room was usable.

[UnedibleMuffin]

I go to the University of Nottingham also and where I don't agree with the goings on in Gaza, you must also understand that the uni doesn't have the power to solve everything. You also choose footage that makes everything seem worse than I'm sure it was.

I have also noticed your hypocrisy. You demand your right for free speech and yet I notice that other comments have been deleted; I did not see them but surely they have their right to free speech too?

I'm sure this will also be deleted.

[hackfresse2011]

the security guards took away and deleted most of the footage. there was no selection process as this ia all that is left. If there was more, be asured, they would have put it up!

[CuriousJ80]

I'm sad that I couldn't see more amusing footage of your pathetic whining and embarrassing attempts to invoke laws that you clearly know jack-shit about.

[heyholetsgo19]

Technically they were trespassing and the University therefore has a legal right to use reasonable force to get them off their property, provided they were given a reasonable amount of time to vacate the property, or so is my understanding of the law!

[CuriousJ80]

That's a far better understanding of the law than that of the moron spouting his nonsense on the video. I've yet to see a shred of evidence that unreasonable force was used.

[alexlee45]

I would have wacked him one round the head for moaning like a little girl. I'm glad I'm at a university which got rid of this nuissance in an appropriate manner.

[domfox]

People make all sorts of funny noises when they're being hurt. You can laugh it off and pretend that a human being is not being hurt in front of you, that they got what they deserved and that it was necessary for the restoration of order, but it diminishes you as a person to do so. This is an ugly bit of footage, of some large and physically powerful people doing ugly things to other, smaller and weaker, people because someone else paid them to do it - and stood by and watched while they did.

[domfox]

Still, the hired muscle is just doing what hired muscle is hired to do - use their strength to enforce the will of their paymasters. It's not a job for the sensitive - or the scrupulous.

The really detestible actors here are Dudderidge and Riley, who not only commissioned this disgusting display but can now be counted on to spout frictionless bureaucratese in justification of it. They too are only doing what they're paid to do. But any decent person would loathe themselves for doing it.

[NakkyC1234]

This video is an actual joke!! no oscars for you...maybe a raspberry or 2!! Im sure sure you could have found some1 more convincingly screaming to film!

[domfox]

I hope Messrs Dudderidge and Riley are orgasmically delighted with themselves for having arranged this little display of brownshirt muscle...

[LaSofia]

Shocking!

Yet again the University of Nottingham acts in a disgraceful way in order to surpress free speech.

This is the same University that got some one ARRESTED on campus during a peaceful protest! This is the same University that got two innocent people ARRESTED AND DETAINED for being terrorists when they were simply researching into political Islam.

This University is a national disgrace. My advice to prospective students - do NOT come here!