Law students protest at contact hours cuts.

Velida Pudic

There is a disgruntled atmosphere amongst Manchester University Law Students. In an 
undergraduate law lecture on Friday the 20th of March, an academic member of staff hinted 
that the law school was proposing to cut lectures from 30 to 20 per module. Exactly a 
week later the entire law undergraduate received an email from the head of the Law 
school, Frank Stephen, that these proposals had been voted on by the Board of Law. To put 
it lightly, students were not pleased. How had this decision come about? Were students 
consulted? What could we do?

As there has been much confusion, protest and general inaccuracy concerning this issue 
this article aims to provide a comprehensive and accurate account of what these decisions 
mean and how students have reacted.

When the proposals were first ‘leaked’, so to speak, it was not wide spread knowledge and 
the few that knew had no further information on when or if they were to be discussed.

However, things moved faster than expected and four course representatives were invited 
to a special meeting of the Law School Board on Wednesday the 25th. In addition, MULS 
president Kyle Soo was allowed to attend at his request, but he did not have voting 
rights. The meeting lasted three hours and proposals were debated and finally voted on. 
The three course representatives had voting rights but were vastly outnumbered by the 
presence of the staff. As Frank Stephen said in his email of Friday 27 March, ‘it was the 
overwhelming view of the School Board that changes were required to the School’s approach 
to course delivery’.

All four students were against the proposals. As they stand the proposals are for 
lectures to go from 30 to 20 (the number of seminars is to remain at five). Although this 
was the main issue picked up on there were other issues which seem to have fallen by the 
way side. These are that law options which fall below 20 students will not run (16 for 
Criminologists) and that seminar sizes may increase from 8 to 12. These other issues have 
not been as prominent as the lecture cuts, partly because they have not received the 
go-ahead from the law school as yet. But, in the view of students, they could be 
detrimental to their law school experience.

What was perhaps most frustrating about the meeting on Wednesday 25th was that up until 
then there had been no student involvement. The school claims that was the first occasion 
staff were officially told about the proposals and had chance to discuss them. However 
the Teaching and Learning Committee had set up a Task Force in February to discuss 
reviews of Teaching and Learning in the School of Law and proposals for change.

As far as we know, no students were involved in this Task Force. Further to that, the 
tiny proportion of student representatives at the meeting gave the appearance of a 
‘rubber stamp’ from students. But they had no real power, and their dissent appears to 
have counted for little.

It has recently come to light that the Task Force was created before a Staff Student 
Committee meeting in February yet there was no mention of the TF at the Staff Student 
meeting..

Naturally, once the proposals were voted on, word got out to the student population. The 
next day, after a land law lecture, a group of approximately 30 students (some non-law!) 
marched to Alan Gilbert’s office with customary megaphone and chant. One anonymous source 
said to me ‘It’s rent-a-protest!?’ Yet this march was fundamentally a mistake. Why? 
Simply, these are not Alan Gilbert?s proposals. In fact in May 2008 Alan Gilbert was 
reported as wanting to ‘tackle declining contact hours’.
(http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=401882).

Another issue brought up by protestors was that of fees rising which was picked up by the 
MEN in an article that made the newspaper’s front page 
(http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/education/s/1105395_students_demand_more_lectures).

But this conflates the issues. The law proposals are separate to university fees which are controlled by government and University, not each school. Whilst protestors were chanting and arranging a time for a further protest , the UMSU academic affairs officer Chris Jenkinson was meeting with the MULS President and other students to discuss how to move forward. A meeting of law students was arranged for Friday 27th.

Less than an hour before the meeting the official email was sent from the law school stating the changes and reasons. First, Frank Stephen outlined the improvements the law school had made this year with regard to feedback forms and policy (which none of us have seen) and then established that freeing up the time would be good for research. Finally he ended saying this would improve our education. The issue here was that no real explanation was given as to why these changes would improve our learning.

At the student meeting, first on the agenda was to decide the standpoint of the Student Representatives in relation to feedback we had from the students we represent. We are against the cuts and have proposed moderate forms of action such as writing official letters to the Law School and trying to engage in discussion with the law school. The general opinion was that radical methods were to be a last resort. Views are two fold. 

Firstly we are against the cut in contact hours. However we might support lecture cuts if, and only if, we received some other form of individual, personalised learning. 
Secondly we are against the lack of student involvement in the decision-making process and want any future changes to have student involvement from the beginning.

Chris Jenkinson was also present and showed us statistics that Manchester were already below average on law contact hours compared to other Universities.

We believed the meeting was a success in terms of finalising our opinion and putting together arguments. We hoped to proceed in a logical, moderate way with discussion.

Only hours later the protest, which was planned for the Student Union stairs, moved down Oxford Road into the Williamson building where the law school is situated. In fact, many protestors were not even law students. Security was rushed forward and half an hour later the protestors left peacefully after making clear their sense of outrage at lecture cuts.

Many of us believe this is the wrong path to take. The law school has not closed down lines of direct communication with students. Discussion promises to be more productive. 
It is not, at this stage, a question of who can shout the loudest.

Meanwhile Chris Jenkinson received a phone call from Alan Gilbert’s office. The Vice 
Chancellor was not in support of the law school’s decision and believe they had missed 
the point with regards to the Teaching and Learning Review. He was also unimpressed that 
students had not been consulted. Due to this opinion, a meeting was organised for Monday 
the 30th with Frank Stephen, Chris Davies (Dean of Teaching and Learning) and student 
representatives.

The same day of the meeting a badly informed article broke in the Manchester Evening News 
blaming Alan Gilbert’s cost cutting as the reason for the cuts and even needlessly 
mentioning his salary!

The main victory in the meeting was that the Frank Stephen accepted that it had been a 
mistake not to involve students from the start and we believe the law school will be 
taking measures to involve students in any proposed changes in the future.

Secondly, our main grievance was that we felt much was being taken from us but nothing 
given in return. Stephen admitted the school had ‘failed in communicating’ benefits to 
us. A disappointing feature of the meeting was that although we constantly asked what our 
benefits were going to be, a less than substantial answer was given. We asked Stephen to 
clarify these benefits and he said that personalised learning, such as seminars, had to 
improve. We asked whether Stephen could produce a document outlining how he hoped to 
improve seminars, so as to make the Law School accountable next year, but again was met 
with a less than substantial answer. The meeting was frustrating at times. It did feel 
like too little too late. But the student involvement and better explanation about the 
benefits were minor victories. The final question, ‘are the decisions set in stone?’ gave 
us some hope. The decisions are not final.

The Student Representatives have decided to continue to request the revocation of the 
proposals  if certain requests are not met as this best represents the Student opinion. 
The Student Representatives question the legitimacy of the decision due to the lack of 
student consultation. We believe the Law School should outline its full package for 
enhancing the student experience with concrete references to how students will benefit. 
If the proposals don’t adequately benefit students then we reserve our right to challenge 
the contact hour cuts. For now we don’t condone direct action but if dialogue between the 
school and students becomes meaningless we will have to take further action. We hope it 
will not come to this.

Timeline:
February: Task Force created to conduct a Teaching and Learning Review
March 20th: Proposals hinted at in a lecture
March 25th: School Board Meeting. Proposals voted for.
March 26th: March on Vice Chancellor?s office
March 27th:
Official email from Frank Stephen explaining changes
Emergency Student Representatives Meeting
Protest and march on Law School
Call from Vice Chancellor’s office
March 30th:
Manchester Evening News front page article
Meeting with Student Representatives, Frank Stephen and Chris Davies

Links:

Alan Gilbert Interview:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=401882
MEN article:
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/education/s/1105395_students_demand_more_lectures