Nouse.co.uk » Protests spark counter campaign on campus

Protests spark counter campaign on campus

March 10, 2009
Peter Campbell

The signatures on the DISARM petition handed into Heslington Hall by the protest two weeks ago were “gathered on false grounds”, allege the founders of the anti-protest facebook group.

Michael D’Cruz, who founded the group after witnessing the protests, said a large proportion of the 2000 signatures were people bullied into signing it. One student was even called a fascist for not signing the petition.”

Freddy Vanson, one of the leading figures in the recent protests, apologised if any offence had been caused. “There were high levels of disagreement over this issue, and I do sincerely apologise if anyone has come away with hard feelings. People came up to me and called me Stalinist. It’s just a name calling game, and it detracts from the main substance of the debate and issue.”

In a letter to the University Council, Ben Edwards, an officer on the facebook group, said, “instead of explaining the facts they [the petitioners] just walked up to random people and asked extremely provocative questions such as ‘Do you support the murder of children?’ and ‘Do you believe that children should be forced to go to war?’ and placed billboards with ‘What will flourish when blood is the only fertiliser?’ They then explained that the University supported all these actions and that signing the petition would stop the support.”

The letter goes on to say that the students have no right to protest against the investment. “Students who have come to university here could have easily found out that the university had investments in BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce” and adds “the anti-BAE campaign’s numbers are highly inflated.”

Vanson rejected these claims of bullying. “It says on the top of the petition that we were signing to prevent University investment in the arms’ trade, and particularly in BAE – the fourth largest arms producer in the world. Many people signed in a rush… you can’t control what everybody says when petitioning.”

He did, however, add that the comments were most likely said to “conservative right-wing people who weren’t going to sign anyway.” He also adamantly supported the placement of the sign in the busy physics building. “Guilt tripping has become an acceptable form of advertising – governments force cigarette companies to put images on their labels. The poetry was just an emotive reflection of the reality of many people’s lives.”

Vanson claims that the facebook group has changed radically since it was set up. “It started as a group to support the BAE investment, even saying that the crisis in the Middle East was good for the BAE investment. They set up the group to undermine us.”

D’Cruz says that the group is primarily to object to the protests, saying “our main goal is to stop the protests altogether.”

This message is reinforced by Edwards’ letter to the University, which states that “students feel that they are the only people who matter in the university. This selfish belief does not take into account the livelihoods of the people’s whose pension funds are being funded by the investment in BAE.”

The group has already overtaken the Disarm facebook group in numbers of members, which has delighted D’Cruz. “I believe this is indicative of general campus opinion of the protests in that they are a nuisance and they need to stop.”