Politics students staged a mass walkout after their lecturer put on a video

Apparently they didn’t pay £9k for YouTube

lecture leeds LUU marx politics protest students uni walkout

A first year Politics and International Studies lecture was thrown into chaos yesterday when half of the students coordinated a walkout over Yik Yak.

The Introduction to Political Ideas module, or PIED1601, is taken by all first year students – with over 300 on the register.

However many students walked out yesterday after it emerged the lecture was to consist entirely of a 51 minute YouTube video on Karl Marx.

A Yik Yak photo of the lecture theatre, captioned I give it 10 minutes

About halfway through the lecture there was a mass walkout after students realised the lecture was not going to be expanded upon beyond the YouTube video.

Some of the walkouts were coordinated on Yik Yak, with one mass exodus planned at 16:40 and a final push ten minutes later.

Following the lecture, Yik Yak, Twitter and Facebook were filled with comments from politics students, and strangers, expressing their distaste, most of them using the hashtag #PIED1601.

One user commented: “I would leave too but I’m enjoying the Yaks too much”.

Another said: “Can’t believe I waited 40 mins to leave that lecture omfg #PIED1601”.

Politics Fresher Josie was among the unlucky few to sit through the entire lecture.

Josie told the Tab: “The lecturer often starts with a two minute video and then we carry on, but this one was 51 minutes long.

“The whole lecture was just some random Youtube video. I didn’t actually watch any of the video – I was too distracted by Yik Yak.

“The only time we all actually looked up was when this woman in the video suddenly said ‘sexual fetishes’ really loudly, and we all looked up like, ‘What the hell is this we’re meant to be watching?’

“Some people made a dash in the first five minutes. Then walkouts started being coordinated on Yik Yak, so someone would say ’15 people leave at 4.30′ and on the dot people would sneak out.

“I couldn’t leave. I was in the middle of the third row – all the lucky people at the back crept out of the top doors.”