In the tumultuous months following the UK’s Brexit vote, the European Students’ Union will be working closely with student organisations across the continent to ensure their voices are heard amid negotiations and fears of the rising far-right. Beth Button on the executive committee explains how it’s also looking outwards to build the foundations of a global student movement.
The PIE: What do you do at ESU?
BB: I’m one of seven executive committee members that are elected to represent ESU for a year, so we help lead the political side of the organisation, campaign and represent students at various meetings at a European and international level.
The PIE: How has ESU’s role changed in the last few years?
“We take a very active opposition to threats to academic freedom or to the rights and protections of students”
BB: The European Students’ Union has always been grounded in activism and political campaigning – we focus on supporting our unions to develop and campaign on a national level, so we do a lot of capacity building. We also do a lot of work on educational quality assurance, mobility and internationalisation.
But I think as the political movements in Europe are moving and we’re seeing more and more national elections shift to the right and things like Brexit, and a growth in racism and xenophobia, there’s a desire to start to campaign more on anti-racism, anti-fascism.
The PIE: ESU issued a statement condemning the academic purge in Turkey earlier this year, didn’t it?
BB: Yes. We take a very active opposition to threats to academic freedom or to the rights and protections of students, whether that was supporting our friends in Burma when they were arrested for actively protesting against their university or Turkey’s violations of academic freedom.
The PIE: What are ESU’s aims following the UK’s Brexit referendum?
BB: Following the vote, ESU supported NUS UK in calling on the government to offer guarantees to EU students currently studying in the UK that their status is protected – we need more assurances and certainty in what’s a very confusing time for them.
“We need more assurances and certainty in what’s a very confusing time for EU students”
We will also support national unions where they think they might be having national referendums, like France. We’re offering a lot of support and resources for unions locally who want to start talking with their own students about the issues and on how to run a progressive campaign in their elections, getting students out to vote and that sort of thing.
We’re also looking at potentially using ESU as a voice for British students on a European level. We won’t have a seat at the table in negotiations, but what we do have is a presence in Brussels, and we’re looking at how the NUS in the UK can use ESU, and the connections we have with MEPs or the committees we sit on in the EU.
The PIE: What do you think British students’ concerns are around Brexit?
BB: I think there was an overwhelming feeling that we took a symbolic step of isolationism. And that for the student generation was a feeling that we’re shutting ourselves off from opportunities, but also we’re telling the rest of the world the society we want to be, and that doesn’t line up with the values we as young people hold. I think young people are concerned that they don’t have a voice or a presence in politics, and that things are happening around them and to them without their participation.
For Wales, where I was [student union] president before I joined ESU, there are huge concerns around loss of funding, infrastructure and investment. Young people are acutely aware of what the EU has done for them, whether it’s in universities and research funding or in our communities and youth projects, so we know what we’re going to lose when we leave.
“Young people are acutely aware of what the EU has done for them, so we know what we’re going to lose when we leave”
The PIE: How can education institutions help to empower students post-Brexit?
BB: I don’t think students’ voices are heard enough; there wasn’t enough of a voice of young people, and students particularly, in the [Brexit] campaign, and that’s reflective of politics more broadly. Universities have a role to play in elevating the voice of students. At the moment there’s a lot of anger and frustration, but that could be channeled into something that makes a real, positive difference.
The PIE: Do you think the student voice is sometimes absent from discussions on international education?
BB: I’m laughing because often when you have student representatives at a conference, [organisers] make a big thing of saying, “We’ve got some students in the room, everybody give them a clap!” so there’s a danger that there can be a bit of a tokenism when students are brought in. There is always more room for students to give first-hand experience in educational discussions, but their voices have to be valued and respected as much as the academics or university leaders there.
The PIE: Talk me through the Bergen Declaration that was signed recently and your vision for a global student movement.
BB: We brought together students from 13 countries, from South America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The idea is that the European Students’ Union has always operated in partnership with those student movements but we decided we wanted to [formally] bring together the student movements from all over the world to discuss shared issues, with the long-term goal being the creation and development of a global student movement.
“We wanted to bring together student movements, with the long-term goal being the creation of a global student movement”
We all shared our values and principles, as well as issues that we’re facing in our education systems. Out of that we then developed a written statement of what we understand the purpose of education to be. It has a number of strands about the right for representation structures, the right for students to engage in protest and active participation, having a democratic education system, having one that’s free.
The PIE: So now the Bergen Declaration is written, what are the next steps?
BB: Well, the declaration not only unified all of these global student movements into feeling that they were part of a common struggle, but should now hopefully provide the foundation through which we can start talking about: what logistically does a global student movement look like?
The group will start taking the Bergen Declaration to international organisations like the UN and UNESCO. We have a voice in European cross-national organisations, but internationally, how do we get students’ voices globally heard within these international organisations? So the point of it as well is to start to have a mandate and platform for that.
The PIE: Is the plan to get signatories from more countries?
BB: Yes, we’ve had it translated into several languages and the plan is to get more people to add their names to it, because then we’ve got something that then has a collective buy-in from everybody.
“Education funding was the one unifying factor amongst all of our student movements”
I’m also in the process of organising a global campaign in November. One of the things that came out of the drafting of the declaration was the fact that whether you’re a student in Canada or Brazil or the UK, everybody’s facing cuts to education and everybody’s facing cuts to grants and the rise in privatisation and tuition fees, so education funding was the one unifying factor amongst all of our student movements. We thought, we already know that a couple of student movements are planning demonstrations in November, why don’t we make November a month of action around the world?
The PIE: What will the campaign look like?
BB: It’ll be a global umbrella campaign under which everyone can share solidarity and best practice for their national struggles. For student unions who don’t have as many resources as others, we’ll offer them resources and support in how to set up and run a campaign specific to their local context.
How powerful will it be if on November 17, which is International Student Day, however many million students around the world all come together under one banner of our vision for global education?
