By Marina Carman and Ray Fulcher
Occupations of university buildings have been an important and useful part of the campaign against education cuts nationally this year. However, a debate emerging at the moment concerns how student occupations fit into the broader overall strategy needed to defeat fees and education cuts.
A leaflet put out by the Student Unionism Network and National Union of Students in Melbourne recently argued that universities are "multi-million dollar businesses" which "profit from student fees".
While students can't affect "profit margins" or disrupt "business as usual" in the same way as striking workers can, the leaflet continued, "If students shut down the 'business centre' of a university — its administration building or corporate research centre — then VCs, Uni Councils and the whole user-pays education industry can be brought to a temporary standstill".
The occupations this year have disrupted university business as usual, but the universities themselves have continued operating even whilst hundreds of students have occupied their administration buildings. They have not come close to bringing the "user-pays education industry" to a standstill.
But then, that hasn't really been their aim, and nor should it be.
Their aim has been to demonstrate the depth of student anger, to serve as a focus for student organisation and to make VCs and the government think twice about further attacks, even to force backdowns on specific issues. In doing that, they've been able to involve and motivate a significant number of new activists.
Occupying offices and disrupting university functioning are important but largely symbolic actions. The measure of an occupation's success is if it has helped build a bigger and more concerted campaign, involving more students and educating wider layers of the campus population.
If we're really looking at reversing government policy or at bringing the "user-pays education industry" to its knees, what's needed is a massive, mobilised campaign, nationwide student strikes by tens of thousands and large-scale staff industrial action. We'd be looking at occupations of the entire university campus — and no small minority can do this.
Our overall strategy should not be shutting down university administrations through individual small-scale occupations but convincing and mobilising more students and staff. Within that strategy, we can look at a variety of tactics: mass rallies, pickets of parliamentarians or university officials, teach-ins, general student and staff meetings, occupations.
The problem with the current discussion is that occupations and building a mass campaign are becoming counterposed rather than one being part of the other. Occupations themselves are imagined to be the winning strategy, regardless of their size, their purpose, their target and their impact on student consciousness and organisation.
Socialist Alternative in Melbourne provided an example of this false outlook when they distributed a leaflet which actually denigrated recent mass actions of thousands of students and argued that actions are worth little unless there is a plan of "occupying something, anything".
Beyond this, it's just a few short steps to making a fetish of "direct action", without any thought as to its consequences. For example, the International Socialist Organisation argued in favour of throwing confidential personnel files out of the window at the Melbourne Uni occupation.
They then defended this decision at the next Education Action Group meeting, in spite of the fact that it had obviously weakened support for the occupation amongst staff and students, on the grounds that such support was not as important as trying to "shut down the administration" (even though it didn't even do that).
At UNSW, a member of the ISO even argued against an occupation of the council building not because of the demonstration's small size, but because students supposedly didn't have the "guts". The key thing that the student movement needs at present is not more "guts", but more focus on (and skill in) convincing a far larger cross-section of the student population to join the campaign.
Occupations can be an important part of building a broad, organised and politically conscious student campaign. But the student movement has to see how occupations fit into the overall strategy of building a mass oppositional movement of staff and students, the only thing really capable of winning our demands.
[Marina Carman is a member of the University of Sydney Resistance Club. Ray Fulcher is a member of the Melbourne University Resistance Club.]