I'm killing my blogmas spirit today with a little rant... I'm aware a lot of people reading this will know how much I hate striking action in any way shape or form, but yesterday, the university staff decided it would be appropriate to strike once AGAIN this term. To say that I was extremely pleased about the strikes would be far far far from correct.I'm not against strikes in their ideals, I am completely aware of the reasons that the staff chose to strike yesterday, and yes I am fully aware that they believe they are being paid unfairly, but is strike action really the best way to piss off the government?
Quite clearly, it is not, because no matter how much the teaching unions strike, the government do not give in. Maybe the staff should just not hand in annual reports that the government demand.. or do something that effects the government directly, and something that doesn't prevent the students from learning.
Some of the students at the University of Aberdeen pay full fee's to go to University, and I'm one of them. Although as a 'Rest of the UK' student I only pay £9,000 a year to go to University, international students pay a lot more - and here's a nice fun fact - we don't get a refund for the hours missed by lecturers and tutors choosing not to turn up. I'm not saying don't strike, I mean feel free to strike on a wednesday when none of us have university and can afford to miss a day.
Furthermore, to just fuel my hate fire for the strikes, Aberdeen University Students Association decided that it would be a fantastic idea to send an email to every single student saying 'support the strikers, do not show up for class', oh and to follow that, placed a sign outside of their building claiming that 'Students support the strikes' - which clearly is not true of all students. Not only was it extremely wrong the students association to email such a thing, it was unrepresentative of all students and merely the opinion of what I would say, a minority, it is also completely irresponsible to tell students not to attend lectures and tutorials that some of staff were still willing to hold. Not all of the staff supported the strikes, and to claim that if you went to a tutorial or lecture that was still being held, that you were against staff getting more fair pay, is extremely unfair.
In addition to this, the claim that we, as students, would not be disadvantaged, by the strikes, is again wrong. I felt that I was at a disadvantage missing lectures, and missing out of 3 hours of university that I have already paid for in advance, at a pretty steep amount of £9,000 or £45 an hour to be exact. I'm just infuriated about the fact that so many of us have to pay for the privilege of going to university, and yet, we have had two full days of university taken away from us this term.
I don't know that everyone will agree with me, in fact, I'm sure that some people won't agree, but I just felt that some of the views of students that don't support the strikes, and felt that their voices were not heard.
You can find out more about the strikes on the bbc new website, and on all of the university websites too.
Hope this doesn't kill the blogmas spirit!
Ysabelle xxxxx
