A Thursday post with nothing about the UGM?!

From the bus on the way in- shame about the lights reflected in
the window.

This is getting a bit repetitive, and must be very boring to read, but I missed another lecture today. I'm not quite sure what happened- I set the alarm to wake me in time to be in for 9 o'clock, and got woken by a text to discover it was 1.15 pm. I dread to think what time I'd have woken up if I'd had my phone on silent as usual.

The text was from one of the people I'm doing the group project with. Three of us were supposed to meet at 10, and the fourth, who couldn't do the morning, was supposed to text me in the afternoon to find out where we were working and come and join us. We were supposed to have a massive day long session and get it practically wrapped up- though it'd been agreed that I could go to the UGM at 1 then come back.

Of course, I felt really bad for having failed to turn up. I sent an email to explain what had happened and ask where they were, then got dressed and went into college. I went to check my email, but there was no reply as yet. Well, I thought, maybe they're taking a break for lunch or something. I had a look through all the other emails while I was there. There was a meeting with the Treasurer for everyone who'd been in the sit-in, because the Sabbatical Officers had been called to a meeting with people from the School, who, it was anticipated, would have a go at them for not preventing the protest, and probably offer a debate with Sutherland to try to prevent further protests. Of course, not all the Sabbatical Officers even knew it was happening beforehand, and those who participated did so as ordinary students, so it seems rather inappropriate to tell them off, but that's by the by. The meeting was for us to say if there was anything we wanted the Treasurer to pass on- the Sabbatical Officers couldn't accept anything on our behalf but they could explain what they thought our reaction would be to any offer. The meeting was at three, and as by this point it was ten to and I had still had no email from the group members, I decided I could probably go.

Once there, as the meeting was just getting started, my phone rang (I still hadn't put it on silent again)- one of the group members. There was only an hour before he had a lecture; he asked whether I could meet him to do some project. If it had been before I got to the meeting, I would have said 'of course' even though I hated to miss the meeting- after all it was already terrible enough that I'd missed meeting them at 10- but I couldn't bear to leave now I was actually there, and asked if it would be ok to meet in half an hour. Of course, that wouldn't really leave enough time to do anything before his lecture, but I offered it anyway. He said he didn't think it'd be worth it, and asked where I was, and if I was actually in something. I explained I was but did offer to come (I think, unless I'm remembering wrong). But in the end we agreed to meet next week. I'm going to try to find the time to put the R history files in order and put comments in our functions, and maybe start the write-up, to try and make up for what happened (though admittedly I had already said I'd do the first two things anyway).

I probably should have taken the phone call outside, or spoken quite a bit more quietly, I realised when I hung up.

The meeting was pretty interesting. One thing that was revealed was that the Evening Standard was running the story- the Treasurer printed out a copy to show us. It started with a massive mistake though- it said that the protesters were removed by four policemen. This was our fault- it was due to a sentence in our press release that was both ambiguous and erroneous- the press release stated that 'four police and four community support officers were called to remove protesters', by which it was meant that they were called to be there in case they were needed to remove us, but actually, although the person who wrote the release thought it was true at the time of writing, that wasn't why they were there at all (I did wonder about it when they sent the release round late on the evening of the protest- we knew policemen had been there before we even came on the scene, so it seemed incorrect that they were there in order to remove us, but when the release was emailed to us it had already been sent to the press so I thought there was no point in querying it). The write-up was pretty sympathetic to us, which was nice.

There was a reporter from the Beaver in the meeting- he was also one of the protesters- and among other things he asked for a comment from a spokesperson about the freedom of speech issue (since the School and audience members were claiming we were denying it to Sutherland and that this was very bad, but in fact we were only protesting in this way because it was our only chance to protest at LSE in Sutherland's presence, and whatever we felt about his record, we wouldn't have stopped him speaking had he not been chosen as Chair of Council. Since we rejected his offer to spend 15 minutes questioning him, because it would have meant giving up the protest and he would still have been Chair, that was rather open to misinterpretation). As we were leaving the meeting afterwards, F (a long time and pretty active People and Planet committee member) and I couldn't remember whether a spokesperson had actually been chosen, but F said she had liked what I'd said about mentioning that there have been other people coming to speak at LSE whose views the same people would probably have disagreed with and we didn't try (and didn't want to try) to stop them speaking), and suggested that in any case it might be good to give the Beaver several quotes to choose from. She suggested we both write a quote, and that I volunteer to be the spokesperson if in fact no-one had been chosen (I'd told her I wouldn't mind). The conversation was interrupted as we went down the stairs from the mezzanine level to the Quad by some guy saying "Nice legs!" We were't sure which of us he was referrring too, but agreed that it wasn't terribly appropriate!*

I went to one of the computer rooms and sent an email to the group explaining that we weren't sure if a spokesperson had been chosen, but if one had, could that point please be included, or if not, I was happy to do it, and outlining what we'd discussed about giving the Beaver a selection of quotes to choose from, then giving a quote about the freedom of speech issue, and also about why we didn't accept the 15 minutes of questions offer. But later I rather regretted sending it- for one thing, I said that I wasn't sending it separately to the Beaver because that reporter was on the list anyway, whereas I should have asked what everyone thought about having several people giving quotes first. I should also have said I "didn't mind" being the spokesperson rather than that I was "happy" to be it**- if I was going to offer at all which really I maybe shouldn't have as I'm not that great at that kind of thing. Someone else sent an email soon afterwards suggesting that a statement be written by a couple of people and sent round for everybody's comments and suggestions before submission, and that was a much better idea. Luckily, nobody made any reference to my email- hopefully they didn't pay too much attention to it.

The People and Planet meeting was a chance to think about something else for a bit, as I planned a campaign to ask NatWest to stop investing in ethically and environmentally dubious projects with a couple of other people***. Back in halls, though, my mind was firmly back on the Sutherland protest. I'd bought an Evening Standard on the way home (something I normally never do), but there was no mention of us (I later found out that we were pushed out in the late editions to make way for a story about a barrister making cocaine in his flat, which I did see). Flatmate 7 told me that we'd been in London Lite though- sadly she hadn't been able to save a copy. The one time I actually want a copy- it's usually such an effort not to be given one. It had the same error about the policemen, apparently- it was probably the same text as the Evening Standard since I believe they're published by the same people.

I had a look on the internet for stuff about it, and found a blog entry by an audience member (and sent a link to it out to the group). A blog entry by a different audience member had already been emailed round the group. Both were at least vaguely positive (unless the one I found is being very subtly sarcastic)- the one that was emailed round unequivocally, the one I found in a kind of confused and not 100% way that means that for the first few paragraphs it actually sounds like it's against us. Here are the links for those plus a link to a site that printed our press release as-is, plus some photos that we attached with it (though I think they printed each photo twice...)

The one that was emailed round

The one that I found

The press release, basically

Incidentally, it's interesting to see that it looked from an audience perspective that we looked as though we were about to capitulate at certain points, because we (or at any rate I) didn't feel at all uncertain about our resistance from where we stood- we had to make all decisions as a group, so we had to discuss whether to accept each offer, but each time everyone was just saying 'no' from the start with no-one thinking we should and it was always a pretty brief discussion- or as brief as it could be when we were spread all the way over the stage!

*As in it shouldn't have been said, not as in we don't have nice legs!

**'it'? Should that be 'him', 'her', or 'him or her'?

***Really must get rid of my NatWest account...