Derwent Bar stripped by protesting students
At midnight this evening an unknown group of students stripped Derwent Bar in protest of University restriction of portering hours.
The group of students arrived in Derwent Bar at midnight, and proceeded to strip the bar of all tables and chairs, moving them to the pavement outside of Heslington Hall. All protesters wore hoods and scarves to mask their identity.
The protest was designed to highlight how there were no porters in Derwent, where 24-hour portering was removed this year, to stop the students’ actions. Posters left throughout the bar area carried slogans such as; “Real welfare, not just lip service”, “Safe & Secure: 24 Hour Portering”, “Preventative: 24 Hour Portering”, “Wouldn’t have happened with 24 hour porters” and “24 Hour Porters Please”.
One anonymous protester commented that “if drastic measures are needed to keep student safety a priority then we are more than willing to keep this up.”
It was not until 01:05 this morning that Security Services became aware of the situation, and not until 01:15 that a van of security personnel arrived at Derwent.
At the time of publication the majority of furniture remains outside Heslington Hall.
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Wouldn’t have happened with 24 hour portering…
big up the anonymous massiv. was a good turn out. we will be victorious.
Comment edited by moderator
I have to say though, it was awesome walking out of my bedroom (which has a ground floor view of Hes Hall) to see what appeared to be Derwent Dining room spread out from the fountains to the Hall itself. It wasn’t till 1:21 that anything really started happening, sadly it’s all gone now
What a waste of time and effort. The decision has been made which was supported by YUSU in July. Appreciate your anger but all you have achieved is create extra workload for the already overworked porters and security. It’s a shame you had to print the same message on a large quantity of paper which doesn’t exactly help the environment.
big up the anonymous security and porters, they are awesome!!!
Extra workload for the already overworked security and porters??
This was an easy night for them – what happens when, instead of furniture removal, a student is followed home and attacked in a quiet Derwent Bar or porters’ lodge at midnight? Security turning up at 1.15, over an hour later, is useless – it isn’t good enough.
Will the University not listen to students until there is a serious incident and irreversible damage is done that could have been prevented by the mere presence of a porter?
Our porters and security services are over stretched to the detriment of students’ well being; and, yes, this does mean student welfare. Is this lack of essential provision worth a budget cut??
Extra workload for already overworked porters and security??
This was a simple job for security – what happens when, instead of furniture removal, a student is followed home and attacked in a quiet Derwent Bar or porters’ lodge? Is the University’s safety and security provision for students to get security services to rock up over an hour later to pick up the pieces, when the mere presence of a porter could provide a preventative measure?
Will the University not listen to students until it is too late and irreversible damage to student welfare is done? Porters and security are overstretched and overworked to the detriment of student safety; and yes, that is a welfare provision. Porters are an essential segment of each college’s welfare service, that is undeniable.
The University of York is risking its own students’ well-being for the sake of budget cuts. It’s disgusting.
Wasn’t supported by YUSU – and if they did support it then there’s just another target to change the minds of. Porters are important.
bifo…YUSU have been seen before to change their decisions based on student response – it is after all a STUDENT UNION. Just another example of how York University is so out of touch with the needs and requirements of the student body. £3,700 a year…
A first year Economics and Politics student explained: “It went bang and stopped working on Sunday and I was going to tell the porters about it but there were no porters.”
Bifo, I think you should be a bit more positive. This was an excellent display of college spirit and support for our porters.
Finally! Students taking action! Even if a decision has been made this harks back to the good old student demos of the 1960s!! Bravo!
what’s more interesting is the fact that there are cctv cameras in that bar and yet for about 1 hour no one saw what was going on. Do the cameras actually work and is there anybody watching them from a remote location on campus???
bad form University…. not impressed at all!
Oh Bifo, do you perhaps work for the University? Got to love the strained attempt at criticism. “What else do those student types care about? Hmm… the environment… they used paper! Criticising that might discredit these pesky protestors within their own community”
Wouldn’t have happened with 24 hour portering!
Nice. Very nice.
@Sergeant Lewis – working as a student porter I can tell you that every porters lodge has access to all the CCTV cameras, but they don’t really bother to look at them unless advised by security, who have a giant wall of monitors and keep a 3 month backup.
I’m affraid I support Bifo’s comment as I have seen documents which clearly state the SU were briefed on the proposals in July and despite being disappointed with the outcome, they backed the plans. There were plenty of students around in the summer to mount a protest but did nothing. Now all of sudden because the likes of Derwent are protesting, the SU want to be seen to be active aswell. The opportunity to reverse the decision was lost months ago. Finally I dont see how you can be supporting your porters when you are creating all the workload for them by moving all the furniture back in side. I bet they really appreciated it!
haha, excellent idea.
Bifo…shhh
@Jackie Chan
“I’m affraid I support Bifo’s comment as I have seen documents which clearly state the SU were briefed on the proposals in July and despite being disappointed with the outcome, they backed the plans.”
Which documents – seriously, instead of waging a anonymous smear campaign – why doesn’t the university start growing up.
“Now all of sudden because the likes of Derwent are protesting, the SU want to be seen to be active aswell.”
Eh? YUSU represent students, why on earth would it be a bad thing if they reacted to student demand?
“working as a student porter I can tell you that every porters lodge has access to all the CCTV cameras, but they don’t really bother to look at them unless advised by security, who have a giant wall of monitors and keep a 3 month backup”
So the enhanced and increased-sized security team have a wall of monitors? That’s probably the kind of thing that they should check more than once per hour, right? Obviously security services aren’t up to trying to replace the porters – a porter goes out and looks for any potential problems as well as sitting in a central place where situations can be reported easily. Security AREN’T security – they’re campus police and not even that. Boo, security, boo.
bifo – you do understand the concept of a ‘protest’, right…?
It’s an anti-authoritarian move to demonstrate the beliefs of the protestors. It attracts attention (tick) and raises questions (tick) on the issue at hand.
Environment has nothing to do with it. I’m sure a few sheets of paper will have a MASSIVE impact on the global ecology but they are irrelevant to this discussion.
Hear, hear Inspector Morse! Though this protest pales in comparison with some of the hardcore student protests of bygone days. Moving a few chairs and tables won’t achieve a lot, I suspect…
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/centenary/timeline/local/media/uploadedMedia/jpg/1960-protest.jpg
Dear Protesters
The University of York, in common with every other Higher Education Institute in the UK, needs to implement stringent financial planning in order to counteract the likely future effects of the current adverse economic climate. There are also very strong signals, from both major political parties, that there will be a significant cut in public sector spending and that higher education will not be immune. In the light of that uncertainty, it is vital that the University plan for a trading surplus to ensure that we provide the necessary financial headroom to deal effectively with any potential fall in funding.
To that end we set a tough budget last summer. Academic and non-academic departments were asked to look carefully at efficiency gains. The Directorate of Facilities Management was asked to find more than £2m in savings. Initial thinking involved a really significant loss of service in portering and cleaning. We decided that this was unacceptable and reconfigured our plans. Huge changes have taken place in areas that students do not ‘see’ (such as the stores and the post-room) but in terms of portering we seized a chance and identified changes which we believe can deliver improvements on the old system. We have retained the workforce and re-configured their shift patterns, to work more closely in local areas. We believe that this will deliver real benefits. By creating multi-function teams of porters, better-trained college welfare teams and increased security, we are aiming for improvements not detriments. We talked this through with YUSU and JCR Chairs as soon as we had a clear plan, and over the summer we successfully negotiated the new deal with the trades unions and the porters.
We are beginning a series of focus groups with porters, facilities management teams, college welfare teams and security, to ensure an improved standard of service. At a meeting with the porters yesterday, their new manager, Sue Johnston, explained our plans for a better provision of practical help and welfare for students, based on zoned delivery. We really mean it – we are looking to improve the system here, not to break it. We certainly had the qualified support of the porters we spoke to yesterday, but we all agreed that we need to work together to bring this off. And that includes you too – the student body. It will be more difficult to make it work in the face of ill-informed and poorly directed protest, but we do appreciate your concerns and are actively working to resolve operational issues and bring in this new system. Your patience and support this term will be much appreciated – once the teething troubles are over (and we need to hear from you what they are), we’ll make an assessment of how we’re doing. But if we have to bed in the system in the face of continued disruption, it will take longer.
You can register your ideas and anxieties at a special new email address: portering@york.ac.uk. We look forward to a constructive discussion.
Dr Jane Grenville and Keith Lilley
PVC Students Director, DFM
3 November 2009
Thanks but no thanks – it’s not good enough. Bring the porters back!
I find it strange that such measures are needed to keep the university financially stable. Surely if the millions of pounds spent on new campus’ had been spent on the existing one then portering could have been saved? But then again porters only help students, you can’t pay three grand a year to live in them so why would any one want to do that?
This protest by students goes to show that opinion on cutting portering hours is strong and that cuts will not be simply be accepted.
What is more significant is the exposure of major failures in the ‘systems’ and compromises the University has supposedly put in place.
1. Why did 50+ students, moving huge amounts of furniture from the bar area, go unnoticed when cameras cover this area and an increased security presence is meant to exist?
2. Why did it take over 1 hour to recognise this situation and for any form of response to occur? This is unacceptable.
3. What kind of response should we expect for events and situations far less obvious than this? 2 hours wait? 4 hours? Must we wait until sun-rise for someone to stumble across a problem?
Asking those three questions alone is extremely worrying. The simple fact is 24 hour portering WOULD have prevent this; moreover 24 hour portering HAS prevent many other, far more serious ‘real world’ situations. Of concern is that, in its absence, something so high profile and obvious went totally unnoticed for over an hour. That is unacceptable. The consequences for real world situations, often far less obvious and yet far more serious are grave.
The standardised response from the University is most dull and goes nowhere they haven’t already tried to take us on ‘excuse avenue’. The reality is not beds per porter coverage, but geographical area covered. Indeed, a Porter in New Goodricke covering 600 beds is not the same as one in Langwith covering Derwent & Vanbrugh too: the Goodricke beds are in a manageable, centralised area (stacked on top of each other). New Vanbrugh to Derwent Extension Block is anything but centralised and manageable! Evidently there are high-risk consequences with removing 24 hour portering provisions for such large geographical areas of campus. It is time ‘the University’ (to use the generalisation again) stopped quoting budgets and asking for time, and instead addressed this significant short-coming in security, safety and welfare. Taking a look at the budgets for the top layer of management should be the first step. I trust this will happen at the “University of York Remuneration Committee 2009” on Monday 9th November…
Jane and Keith,
It would have been nice to have had that response from you in reply to the email campaign sent out in week 1, rather than an impersonal, irrelavent list of statistics from Keith’s PA.
I understand it must be busy in Hes Hall right now, but when the current issue is such a hot potato, perhaps it would be nice if those in charge would deal with students personally, rather than sending pro forma emails which only serve to emphasise the lack of communication between students and central administration.
Here’s an idea Jane.
Commercial services actually doing a good job, and make some more money for the University. This money is then used to pay for more portering.
“It will be more difficult to make it work in the face of ill-informed and poorly directed protest”
Then perhaps you could inform the protesters, will these efforts to “improve the system” see the return of 24-hour portering in the near future?
http://www.nouse.co.uk/2009/01/20/cantor-salary-jumps-16000-as-university-income-rises/
What about top-end salaries? Cantor’s over £225,000 per year. That’s compared with an average Vice Chancellor salary of under £160,000. Cut him and the rest of the management staff down to size and you’ll find your portering money. And that’s assuming that they don’t sneakily put their own wages up in a few days, which I wouldn’t be surprised about!
Bravo Joe!
Bifo, theI think it is appalling that the university would make such important decisions in our absence during the summer and I’m proud of my fellow Derwenters for protesting.
As I write it would appear that those muppets at No Use are gearing themselves up for another puerile staged load of boll@cks
Why has my comment been moderated out?!
Sam, it’s still there but needs a double check that it doesn’t cross into libel turf (I’m pretty sure it does, but like I said, I’ll double check that).
Who cares?! It is only the second and third years who are driving this campaign. Freshers don’t care because we have no real need for it, yet we are having these opinions shoved down our throats, when the older students don’t actually live on campus.
Seriously. It makes very little difference to any of us. Stop whining. And don’t wake me up with the sound of chairs and tables outside our block. It’s going to happen anyway. I may as well get some sleep.
Completely in agreement with the protest. One of the nicest things about being at a collegiate university, as opposed to friends who weren’t, was having a porter there 24 hours a day. Just quietly reassuring, even if I personally never needed a taxi paid for or any emergency assistance. I wouldn’t have wanted cuts in places ‘students can’t see’. I hope that with some effort this decision could yet be reversed (and am willing to pop up to York for a good ol’ protest if one gets organised on a large enough scale!).
Didn’t the porters catch the thieves last year? Would security not have noticed they were there for over an hour? That’s really worrying.
Oh and “Drop it”, maybe that’s because they actually lived on campus for a year and know what it’s like, instead of spending three weeks in halls like us lot? The porters have already been useful to me and I’m sure that it’s useful to plenty of people that aren’t just locked out of their Donald Barron room!
The protest pictures look really funny but part of me doesn’t really understand why? As an extension block ex resident the porters didn’t ever do anything for us anyway??
So if a van was parked up outside and furniture taken away, thats a pretty big bill for replacement. They should be fortunate it was only a student stunt, not a real theft. There’s plenty of stuff that would be a target for criminals in derwent college, and if it takes an hour for security to notice, think what people could get away with.
Theft, vandalism, graffiti and assault will increase if the entire college is without a porter.
Shame on the university for their blatant disregard of safety. Surely the fears about hes east draining hes west funds are now being realised.
The response from Heslington Hall just isn’t good enough. It doesn’t answer any questions and is blasé about how little they seem to believe porters matter. “Teething troubles”? I’d hardly call a one-hour wait for a crime to be noticed a ‘toothing trouble’ when last term it would have been stopped instantly. Its hes hall’s loss as well as ours.
I wonder if the TV in Derwent JCR is worth anything?
to Drop It.
As a Derwent first year I’m extremely grateful to the second and third years helping with this campaign, we don’t have the network in place to organise things like this. It’s great to see they haven’t just abandoned new students and are still committed to student welfare via the invaluable service porters provide.
Don’t assume you speak for first years, because the vast majority I know are fully behind the campaign.
This kind of protest is a valuable way to mobilise students and to highlight the necessity of porters and the great job they do every day.
Hadn’t James and Goodricke shared a porter for years? Why no protest then?
Because the colleges were so close together, one porters lodge was adequate. The same is not true for both Vanbrugh and Derwent trekking over to Langwith.
8% payrises for the SMG (0.5% for the rest of the staff)
Porters lodges closing.
Lilley whinging at his mis representation in the press regarding asbestos works.
Welcome to York, you little cash cows you.
Where are the quality jobs for local people that were promised when planning for Hes East was being sought?
Jane Grenville/Management,
I would love to offer you my views at the new special email address. However it doesn’t work, my message has come back twice. So how do you plan to achieve a constructive debate? Without it there will it seems continue to be broad student protest and little progress towards an acceptable solution.
another ex Derwenter by well about 20 years
It is really sad and a bit disturbing to read about the loss of night time portering.
I say night time because that’s when porters (more than) earn their money.
Stopping petty vandalism, noise nuisance, emotional problems, lost people, intruders – I can say I saw all of these – weekly!
No elaboration in saying I saw them stop – self harm, fights that with CRB checks could ruin a career and much much more.
All were known by name and knew yours – even got racing tips!!
Same for Derwent Bar – what has this University become?
The collegiate system makes York special – if that means spending a penny to save a pound so be it.
Well done to those who took the furniture out – the ‘crack’ security sure showed their worth in replacing eyes on the ground.
Reminds me of the ‘Standard issue toilet tissue issue’ (late 80′s)- direct action is best
For a moment I got excited, thinking that the student had ‘stripped’ naked. Now THAT would have been a good story.
The porters are crap anyway. Why do we want them preserved when they hardly do anything worthy of preservation?
They are miserable most of the time, and useless the other half of the time.
If that’s the case, your porters are crap. Mine, however, are always cheery, welcoming, talkative, friendly and more importantly are always there – which is the best thing about them.
http://www.yorkvision.co.uk/news/porter-campaign-fundamentally-changing
Oh my poor little darlings, you don’t have a porter to wipe your tears and dust you off after a slip, never mind mummy will kiss it better. We are supposed to be adults for god’s sake.
Wake up to the harsh reality of the world, the University has made the decision, implemented the decision and nothing anyone does is going to change that im affraid.
If millions of signitures can’t stop a government going to war do you really think a few thousand are going to change the Universities mind.
Not a chance!!
Oh and Anon ”Didn’t the porters catch the thieves last year?” it wasn’t the porters it was two security staff in plain clothes.
@Welcometotherealworld
I agree …
If something is too hard to do, then it’s not worth doing at all. You said it!
@ Welcometotherealworld
As much as I might think that the U of Y does too little to prepare some students for the harsh realities of life outside campus, and the collegiate system occasionally creates too much of a ‘sixth form’ feel to university life, all that aside, I don’t think you can suggest that the portering system infantilises students. What they do is provide excellent security and welfare assistance to those who need it. Those who don’t don’t need to use it, but it’s available to those who do.
In ‘the real world’ we would use the police, ambulance service, and helplines for the things they assist us with- for example, I didn’t feel comfortable confronting a group of men in my first year, about the unacceptable noise levels night after night. In the ‘real world’ I would call environmental health. At uni, I called the porters. I consider myself exceptionally independant and all too aware of the ‘real world’, but they’ve helped me out by directing an ambulance to my housemate when I couldn’t leave them, provided first aid, dealt with noise complaints, with low level theft and been a friendly face at three in morning, when I was blind drunk and totally lost.
As for your suggestion that organised protest and petitioning doesn’t work, have you already forgotten the complaints made to the PCC about the Jan Moir scandal? And the fact that very little petitioning persuaded M&S to remove advertising from the page on which Jan Moir wrote her hideous article?
And whilst the protests against the war in Iraq may not have stopped the war, it did a great deal to show that the general populace were not behind the war, and would not have it ‘in their name’. This campaign shows that students will not let the university make these kinds of cuts and take it lying down.
Lastly, the campaign is not just about students wanting to be mollycoddled- there is an element of altruism. Do you think cuts to portering will stop here? It will end in job losses across campus, first porters, then cleaners- at a time when the university is already breaking promises to provide locals with jobs at Hes East.
The student support of porters is much appreciated by them- you ask any porter- unless you think that talking to one of them might make you look like you’re a bit childish.
Three years after the introduction of the framework agreement, the University is once again messing around with the lives of the lower grade staff working in DFM. Over the summer, I have listened to the reasons why DFM has to lose a huge amount of expenditure. One thing that caught my attention is the expected rise in utility bills been used as a reason. When I walk round the campus on a night time to lock down buildings etc, the amount of lights and computers left on is crazy. I bet the academic departments won’t be expected to contribute towards any of the bills. Instead they are still advertising jobs earning a nice sum of money.
Unfortunately we have reached this stage and I fully appreciate the students anger especially those of you who reside in Derwent and Vanbrugh. Protesting I agree is one way of showing the University you want to revert back to 24 hour portering. But to those of you who moved the furniture out of Derwent, all you created was extra workload for myself and colleagues who attended that night to move the furniture back. Some of you will disagree with me and continue to claim it shows a lack of security – that’s your choice.
We do a difficult job where we are seen as being the bad guys and porters the good, which I think is reflected in a number of comments on here. However, we aren’t out of touch with students and we certainly aren’t thugs. It may surprise you to know that over 60% of the current security team, started their employment at the Uni as porters. So just because we may have to give you a telling off, we are still trying our best to look after your welfare and security and be as helpful as a porter.
I hope you get the outcome you are looking for.
The recent incident in Derwent A block supports the need for 24 hour portering.
On Saturday night, a polish tramp was discovered in the first floor kitchen helping himself to student’s food and the toilet amenities. It can reasonably be assumed that this had been going on for some time due to the frequent food thefts throughout the block.
The students who discovered the intruder had to call campus security, as there were no porters, and the tramp got away without questioning in the time it took for them to get to Derwent.
I am not trying to suggest that this incident was directly related to the lack of 24 hour portering in Derwent, however it is undeniably an example of the need for an over-night security presence in the college. As a resident of A block I find it highly disturbing that a stranger was able to wander around the college, eat my food and use my bathroom.
Could the porters have stopped this? I doubt it. However it would have taken considerably less time for them to run up to the first floor and confront the intruder when he had locked himself in the bathroom.
@welcometotherealworld:I do not want to be mollycoddled. The need for 24 hour portering is not about first years needing someone to look after us. It is about expecting a basic standard of security. It is the same in an apartment building; there is more often than not an overnight presence, to see that things run smoothly when there are so many people living in close quarters.
The university doesn’t have enough funds to keep 24 hour portering? Where does my three grand plus tuition fees go? I have 4 hours contact time a week, one of those is with a post-grad and the rest of the time I’m expected to teach myself with books I could read anywhere.
Ron – If you made sure the door was closed after you the polish visitor would not have got in, its the most basic of security, I bet your parents dont have many of our Eastern European friends using their toilet.
Secondly, most Porters would have called Security, so why not cut the middle man out and dial it yourself
A thought, if you were all sold 24 portering at welcome days and in prospectus then maybe a class action is in order.
Why block your faces in the photos, scared of your beliefs?
“Why block your faces in the photos, scared of your beliefs?”
This, ‘sir’, is a pathetic statement.
1- It probably wasn’t the individuals themselves who edited the faces- it was Nouse.
2- In Derwent, it’s really not difficult to wait for the person who’s opened a door and run in behind them, or to break the 4-digit code for any of the blocks. These things happen and there should be a contingency system in place for when they do occur. I remember an incident in my freshers year when 3 drunk Scrattyfax students climbed into our block through the 1st-floor window, stole stuff out the freezer and we went after them ourselves- and got them! The point is that the system is my no means infallable.
3- What ‘beliefs’ do they have to be ‘scared’ about? They’re not exactly ‘beliefs’. They probably just don’t want campus security sniffing round them trying for names. It’s pretty academic really.