At ULSU, we centre our work around Liberation to ensure we are not just representing students, but addressing and acting on the inequalities in the Higher Education experience from students from marginalised backgrounds.
As a union we’re a political organisation, that sits apart from the University and if we were not ensuring that our work encompasses the acknowledgement and empowerment of a range of lived experiences, and without equitable management of our vision and opportunities for students, we simply wouldn’t be doing our job.
Many universities claim, that higher education provides social mobility, but this is not the reality for black, trans, disabled and so many other students from liberation groups. We can’t mobilise our way out of systemic oppression using the same vehicles that uphold it, that is why we must be radical in our thinking, considered in our approach, and unrelenting in accepting things for ‘the way things just are’.
What is liberation?
Liberation can mean different things to different people, but at ULSU, our vision of liberation goes beyond representation and inclusion. For us, liberation means reimagining the world, and our places in it. Within the context of Higher Education, this means redefining education from its current confinement as a colonial legacy that reproduces oppression. We not only want to liberate education, but our institution as a whole. From workers’ rights to ending war, we want our University, and the students within it, to be leading us to the world we want to live in.
What liberation campaigns have the SU done?
Do your part-time officers represent liberation groups?
Some, but not all. For example our Women, LGBT+, BME, Trans and Non-Binary, Accessibility positions are there to represent and reflect liberation groups in society and on campus, however the International, Mature, Distance Learning and Postgrad officers represent groups specifically underrepresented in HE.
Statements:
We do hope during your time as a student at UoL you do some learning and self-discovery outside of the classroom, We can all positively contribute and support the betterment of the environment that marginalised student exist in, below you will find some resources alongside previous statements on our stances and liberation-centred campaigns.