The modern university is a curious thing. Just as the British State becomes hopelessly engorged, so too exists this tendency – accelerated by revelations of what could be “got away with” during the pandemic – of a university to overreach, overprovide and overemploy, obscuring its irksome, more expensive task of delivering education behind a myriad of institutional ventures that no one asked for.
For one, there’s a chronic distaste for anything vaguely “effective.” Decisions, usually the wrong ones, are made only after “consultations.” As if parodying Orwell, those in office bend over backwards to rename anything that might sound remotely important, trying but failing to strike a balance between the allegedly intimidating and the utterly meaningless.
For example, renaming the David Hume Tower after several incriminating footnotes were skillfully mined from obsolete letters was surely a resounding victory for social justice. The fact that it was then given the same name as a pre-existing building next door was, presumably, a price worth paying. Perhaps it’s for the best; one rarely thinks of Hume when passing the tower. More frequent impressions are the stench of urine and despair.
Student Unions are now “Associations,” in case anyone didn’t know what the former meant. They typically comprise of so many bodies and vice-roles and subordinate interests as to render the whole thing completely directionless. At least it gets more people involved politically, you’d object; as if there’s anything worse, I’d reply.
Joe Bloggs, drunk on power in his new role as Vice Treasurer Activities and Services, works late into the night in the secret bunkers of EUSA. Fresh from a role at the Centre for Open Learning (COL), one of 40 student advisers at PPLS – themselves beholden to the big fish at College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS) – counts on him for his crucial work.
One can’t help but think that all this, far from serving student interests, functions as some kind of personal development exercise for those who happen to hold a role. Would anyone really notice if they slipped quietly off the face of the Earth?
Anyone who’s tried to locate an employee of SWAY might be starting to get the point. It’s kind of them to open for half an hour every other Tuesday, albeit in vain since, referred from office to office when trying to pin them down, they must just exist in the ether. A friend got as far as an office in Buccleuch Terrace before walking into a teaching union and being hounded out of the door. Predictably, Zoom is SWAY’s favourite way to communicate. Such is their desire to elude that students find themselves asking them to turn their cameras on.
The symbiotic tryst of overprovision and under-delivery evokes a cruel irony; such is the impotent reputation of the university and its excess of “arms-length” bodies that students, often faced with serious academic and pastoral concerns, find themselves fending essentially for themselves.
“View from Edinburgh University Library towards 40 George Square (15216322018)” by Peter Sigrist from London, UK is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.