OPEN THE UNIVERSITIES! Universities are class institutions. They discriminate against the intelligent and creative talent of the working class, they can pick and choose among their candidates on the grounds of politics or prejudice, they oppress their students with stiflingly stupid courses, terrorise them with exams and send them, along with their'reports, to fill the growing ranks within managerial The ideology of the universities makes them out to be independent centres of learning. their power rests on their ability LO information, and the learning that does go on is distorted as a result. The highest form of this control is the examination system -which marks and judges students in secret. Final results point out the general direction of a students destiny, just as initial selection excludes many more from the limited privileges of higher education.
The political files support the universities in this corporate rôle. Their main purpose is intimidation, which starts files for their exclusive. use. Dossiers are not with the students but with the staff themselves. The files the professors keep by future employers. Excuses that they are on the appointment and promotion of their lecturers will be the last to see the light of claimed, carry little weight. If the files are day. The secret dossiers on academics are fatter than those of the students.
The files uncovered at Warwick revealed feared: with the vast increase in numbers intuitive and immediate response of the what the mass of students have always the universities are cruelly and ruthlessly colluding with big industry, with other universities and with the State. concerned the favoured few may afford to control them. be bright and 'different'. The rest, the vast majority, do not have this leeway. An have a decisive effect on the career.
For these files are not confidential - they students own interests, the ruling class keep OPEN THE FILES!
compiled to be read; and to be referred to only records, as the Oxford proctors have only records: open them up and let us have a looK. The files and dossiers ought to be opened and the political records burnt. The mass of students is just. Whilst they do not control the computers, the indexes and the the files they must demand the destruction As far as the students themselves are of the records that the authorities use to The Warwick documents are a start. apparatus exists for noting down social and revolutionary investigation. Their discovery They are a creative and scientific political misdemeanours - which might well struck a blow against the class enemy. Such investigations reverse the balance of fear.
Students gain strength through proving that their fears are justified, that the enemy is are a confidence trick. In the name of the real, that his corruption is evident, and his overthrow necessary. The authorities are isolated and divided; as their mean and narrow interests are exposed to public scrutiny, as genuine academies express their horror and as the press are critical.
Such investigations help make revolution. They force reactionaries to hesitate in continuing in their old ways, they give students courage to insist on new and militants gain experience in Ways. analysing and arguing the specific political relations of Capitalist rule in Britain today. Also, of course, they show the way torward to opening the books of industry and finance.
Finally the files vividly illuminate the entire class role of the universities. The Edinburgh documents especially show the callous judgments that are the culmination of a university training. This bestial and hateful oppression will continue as long as knowledge is controlled by an exploiting class. The closed files signal the closed minds of the university teachers, and the closed doors of the universities themselves.
In the last part of January Edinburgh students The Black Dwarf March 7 1970