UCA Students’ Union had planned to meet Jeremy Hunt, MP for Farnham, following the lobby of 6 other MP’s on the 18th April 2012.
We are no longer able to do this as it seems to us like Rupert Murdoch’s lobbying efforts came before that of his student constituents in Farnham.
Emails were released that show that Jeremy Hunt schemed with the Murdochs to help them win the BSkyB deal.
Jeremy Hunt has time and time again missed or cancelled opportunities to talk to this Union and students at our University. This began with our efforts to have dialogue with him regarding tuition fees and now due to this scandal we cannot speak to him about the devastating impact Coalition government policies have on the number of students UCA can recruit, and push for continued opt-out from the coming changes.
These controls on student numbers damage our institution financially in addition to UCA being the fourth worst cut university in England.
Jeremy Hunt is not only MP for Farnham, but Minister for Culture, Media and Sport. UCA is a creative, cultural institution located in his own constituency.
Not only are we a massive contributor to the national cultural landscape and output, but UCA students study courses that fall into every part of his ministerial remit, from Broadcast Media to Sports Journalism.
We urge you to sign this petition (one of the emails revealed that Hunt thought it was crucial to weaken Avaaz’s campaign!) and help put pressure on the government to fire Jeremy Hunt from his ministerial position.
We need a Culture secretary that actually cares about the future of creative arts education in Britain.
[http://www.avaaz.org/en/fire_jeremy_hunt_2/?cl=1760235095&v=13862
UCASU Executive Committee 2011/12
Steve Martin (Farnham Campus Officer)
Alex Causton-Ronaldson (Epsom Campus Officer)
Luke Frost (Maidstone Campus Officer, Chair)
Dean Smith (Rochester Campus Officer)
Pat Plested (Canterbury Campus Officer)
On Wednesday 18th April campus officers went to parliament as part of the NUS National Day of Lobby and lobbied the MP’s who represent the constituencies where our campuses are.
There are a great deal of changes happening to Higher Education which are being imposed by the government, some of these changes will greatly affect UCA and so we have been campaigning to protect our University.
One of the biggest and most destructive changes to Higher Education is a change in the way in which Universities are allowed to recruit students, if these changes went ahead in 2012/13 UCA would lose around £2 million.
As a specialist institution we have been able, for one year, to remove ourselves from these changes which means in the short term we are protected. However, because the changes to education are so widespread and difficult to predict we would like to be able to remove ourselves from the changes for an additional year in 2013/14.
This would allow the Higher Education sector to level out and settle down after all of the changes come into effect. We met our MP’s to get their support on this issue.
Pat Plested met Canterbury MP Julian Brazier who fully supported our argument and agreed that specialist institutions, like UCA should be protected. He has agreed to write to David Willetts who is the Minister for Education to support our campaign.
Alex Causton-Ronaldson met Chris Grayling MP for Epsom who also agreed to write to David Willetts to support the continued opt-out of the changes.
Dean Smith met Mark Reckless MP for Rochester who agreed that the changes would negatively impact students from non-traditional academic backgrounds; Mark Reckless agreed to write to David Willetts.
Luke Frost met Helen Grant MP for Maidstone who agreed that students should be able to go to University based on their potential not their grades at A Level, Helen Grant asked for us to send her further details which she could use to write to David Willetts to express her concern about the changes.
Jeremy Hunt MP for Farnham is arranging to meet us in the constituency to discuss these issues in the near future. We will post his comments when we meet him.
We are really pleased that the MP’s we spoke to agree to support our campaign and all of the MP’s also agreed to write to David Willetts to highlight their concerns over the changes, and encourage him to extend UCA’s ability to remove themselves from the changes for an additional year to protect our institution and students.
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