1. Defend Refugees – Stop the Far Right, Saturday 9 August
This event on Saturday is a counterprotest against the concerning far right protests outside accommodations housing refugees. Many groups in the city, including the Trade Unions Congress, are supporting the event. UCU Bristol will be there with our banner. It would be great to see many members attending.
2. Refugees Welcome, Sunday 10 August
On Sunday, another event is taking place at College Green as part of the national ‘Welcome Weekend’.
3. Reflections on Mumbai Campus
Last week, we all received an email about the new University Enterprise Campus in Mumbai, India. UCU Bristol and the other two campus trade unions were told about it the week before. Some of you have been in touch about it, questioning the wisdom of the project, particularly in relations to cuts elsewhere in the university. Such scepticism is natural after seeing satellite campuses being part of the adventurous, costly and often foolish expansions of British universities in the last couple of decades.
As a Branch, we are very committed to questioning the university’s financial decisions. For example, we remain sceptical of promises that the Temple Quarter project will be of net benefit to the university. You will have seen our concerns about loans attached to that project putting the university in a position where it has to make a certain surplus in order to avoid increased fees and interest rates. The university leadership is not sharing the details of these lending covenants, so we can’t say for sure how much of the current austerity politics is as a result of the Temple Quarter adventure.
All that said, we do currently not see the Mumbai campus carrying anywhere near that level of risk. University leadership assures us that its investment is low, that the ‘trusted partner’ is shouldering most of the risk, and that they expect a significant return on that investment within a couple of years. Nevertheless, it is early days and we will of course continue to press university leadership for information on the Mumbai Campus as part of its broader financial decision making.