Comments on: Oxford sit-in

By: edd

edd — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:29:02 +0000

This is correct, I believe. The occupiers invited all the tutors to come and give their lectures in any case. I don’t think many actually did, but the thought was certainly there. At one stage there were 150 odd people, but many went to London to lobby the following day. there was also an occupation of the Bodlian in 2000. Check out the newly up dated http://www.oxfordstudent.com for more details.

By: Nasi Lemak

Nasi Lemak — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:16:04 +0000

I believe the students involved in the occupation claim that they wished lectures to proceed as normal meanwhile, and are upset that the university cancelled the lectures for the day. So the anonymous writer is merely following the party line.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 00:17:34 +0000

Ah, Hugh Lloyd Jones! They don’t make them like that anymore … I didn’t see the occupation of the Schools Building here. But today, when I went to the mail room in Balliol to check my pidgeon hole, I did see a copy of the notice Micah quotes up on the door. On it someone had written, in blue ink (very good handwriting, too): ‘Lectures should not be cancelled’ (or words to that effect); and, right below this (same hand): ‘Support the fight against top-up fees!’ The combination of the two demands/assertions seemed to me, if not quite contradictory, at least a bit unreasonable. But maybe the author really wanted, on some level, to be chastised by a Lloyd Jonesian figure?

By: Iain Murray

Iain Murray — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 14:59:29 +0000

I can think of an effective 1980s remedy: send in Hugh Lloyd Jones to lecture to them on Aeschylus. He’d also reprimand them for not wearing gowns in Schools…

By: john b

john b — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 12:06:17 +0000

No, it was HT 99 (I only remember because I was there – and there were definitely closer to 140 of us than 60). Here’s a link. There was a more hardcore 3-day occupation of the University offices in Wellington Square later in 1999, which I didn’t go on because I’d decided by then that fees were probably right…

By: Nasi Lemak

Nasi Lemak — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 20:48:18 +0000

May have been elsewhere in the Bod: http://www.oxfordstudent.com/2001-04-19/news/3 There was also an occupation of schools in MT98, but can’t find reference to that publicly online.

By: micah

micah — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 19:56:01 +0000

I don’t remember the occupation of the Sheldonian, and I was definitely around then. The real surprise this time around, I think, is that the number of protestors is so small. You’d think that the leaders of a student protest could organize in higher numbers.

By: Nasi Lemak

Nasi Lemak — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 19:43:48 +0000

Very similar occupation of the Sheldonian in ?2000 or thereabouts in the previous round of fees. Not that big a deal, really.

By: Conrad Barwa

Conrad Barwa — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:48:43 +0000

Waste of time really; I think they should get on with their normal studies and divert their energies towards more fruitful areas. but then I tend to be a bit jaded about this kind of action these days.