Warwick for Free Education are frauds who actually hate education

News of revolution emerged from the front last week, dear comrades. There were tanks on the University’s lawn at last and just in time to stop poor old Stuart Croft, the new Vice Chancellor, from getting too comfortable. Huzzah! Showing us all how much they value and respect the idea of higher education, campus was once again disrupted by our comrades in Warwick for Free Education.

This ragtag band of ragged-trousered philanthropists took it upon themselves to champion the unwashed masses at Warwick and protest against cuts to grants. How? Well, since they’ve been neutered and banned from occupying campus’ buildings, they’ve taken to the streets. Not to riot, not even to march, but to walk with faux outrage, sit and graffiti.

University Road was, for a brief time, littered with socialist buzzwords. “A harmless combination of solidarity with the less-privileged and a continuation of angsty teenage activism. How noble,” you might think. But I’d put the bronze statues of these revolutionaries on hold, for they don’t really care about students. All they’re really concerned with is their own egos and feeding them with vapid, self-congratulatory “activism”.

I mean, look at how they actually protest. I’d like to remind Warwick for Free Education that the people affected by their time-wasting tomfoolery have nothing to do with government policy on higher education. It’s not the Universities Minister, Jo Johnson, who’s stuck on a diverted bus, nor is it Nicky Morgan; it’s not even blood-sucking Nigel Thrift. It’s real students being disrupted and it’s real employees of the University having their days made a nightmare when they’re trying to either actually get an education or make a living.

One of the protesters told The Boar: “We intend to protest in these disruptive ways to show how angry students are… we want them [the University] to know how strongly we feel and care about this issue.” But there’s no nobility in protest that targets the people you claim to represent. If the fifty or so people who turned up were serious about their demands why not behave like compassionate adults and not like spoilt children?

The people in University House aren’t going to take Warwick for Free Education seriously any time soon. I don’t blame them. Right now, our resident revolutionaries just look like a pack of pampered people more willing to thrash out at their fellow students than engage in constructive discussion or, god forbid, do some coursework. It seems to me as if they just have a bit too much privilege.