The cold machinery of university bureaucracy and the fence around Fallowfield Halls.

The fence erected around Fallowfield Halls without any warning on the 5th November 2020 is indicative of an anti-student sentiment across the university bureaucracy, the administrative system of the University of Manchester. The University argues that the fences were erected as part of controlling the spread of coronavirus during the second lockdown measures imposed in the United Kingdom, students could only leave through a single exit guarded by security.

I bet the fence looked like a good solution on the email when it was sent around the office prior to the building of the fence. Academics like to talk about ‘ethics’ a lot, but I suppose the buraeucrats were all skiving that day. Is the erection of fences and the monitoring of people who the University makes a profit not reminiscent of the prison-like conditions of 19th century Salford textile factories?

Might I remind the University of the consequences of locking down the student, locking the student into one territory (student accommodation) and therefore preventing students from leaving through debt ties, this damaging to the mental health of the student, who has been turned into a means of generating capital.

The cold machinery of university bureaucracy is reminiscent of the parable ‘Before the Law’ in Kafka’s The Trial:

“From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last.“

Metaphorically, the first doorkeeper is the University of Manchester and its bureaucracy, acting as they are the doorkeeper ‘before the law’, ‘the law’ being the second lockdown measures imposed in the United Kingdom.

The second doorkeeper, more powerful than the first doorkeeper, being Manchester itself and its bureaucracy (Manchester City council, for instance).

The third gatekeeper, the State (the United Kingdom) and its colossal bureaucracy, is so terrifying that the first doorkeeper, the University of Manchester, cannot metaphorically even bear to look them in the eye.
 

The University keeps the student behind the first door of student accommodation and restricts their freedom of movement. Much alike how, in the parable, the first doorkeeper locks the protagonist behind the door and tells the protagonist to wait forever, in order to be able to move onwards.

It is clear the University is locking students down into one territoriality, the student accommodation, for the sake of University profits, not for any ‘student safety’ etc. The university was projected to lose £270 million in profits due to COVID-19, in fears of losing students due to the poor quality of online studies, they appear to be locking students down in university accommodation through debt ties: students are less likely to leave the University if they have paid thousands for student accommodation, wishing they had never moved all the way to Manchester.

"A time will come when the creditor has not yet lent while the debtor never quits repaying, for repaying is a duty but lending is an option…” argued Deleuze & Guttari (1984, p.229) in Anti-Oedipus. 

The student is indebted to the university via tuition fees and accommodation fees: but the university refuses to metaphorically ‘lend’, meaning that the university does not need to provide adequate accommodation or tuition that the student is paying for, these are seemingly optional to the university bureaucracy.

Student solidarity with the academic staff and the essential workers of the university of Manchester, who are likely to be victim to widespread cuts due to declining profits, is key.

It is clear that we must not only attempt to decolonise the curriculum at the University of Manchester, we must also attempt to decolonise the cruel University bureaucracy whose only goal is to narrow and increase the volume of the flows of capital from the student to the university stockholders. 

Although even the first ‘doorkeeper before the law’ in my 'before the law' metaphor is powerful: students must organise and attempt to banish these neo-colonial relations of power to the past via protest and solidarity with academic staff, such as lectures, and the essential workers of the unversity, such as cleaners.

Daniel Stratford