The student movement in Ireland has been moving from strength to strength in recent years, which may be seen as a wider reflection of the international student movement. The internet, specifically social media, has created a platform from which international student bodies can contact each other and see how other groups are protesting the widespread education cuts that many governments are implementing. #FundOurFuture is an online campaign aimed at collating all the different approaches to campaigning and giving students one platform to use as a springboard.
Speaking to The University Times, Beth Button, a member of the European Student Union’s Executive Committee, explains that it was their intention to set up a campaign that would be student led: “It’s very much a campaign that we hope is owned by students themselves so anybody can contribute at any point.” The campaign came about last year after a meeting of representatives from student movements across several continents. “Historically there’s been sort of international student movements that have come and gone but it’s the first time in sort of recent history that we’ve got all of us together and started talking about the issues that we’re all facing, the struggles that we’re all facing and the campaigns that we’re running”, explains Button. At this meeting the Bergen Declaration was drawn up, a document which outlines the values and principles of what the purpose of education is, what education is for, who it is for and what its role is in society. The campaign was a reaction to the realisation that across the world people are suffering from similar issues and that there wasn’t one platform where all their ideas were collated: “We thought it would be nice to come up with some sort of campaign where we really showcase and celebrate the work of students around the world.”
One protest involved creating a carpet of the faces of over 600 students and laying it out in front of government buildings on the first day the Ministers of State met.
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With student movements from over 30 countries involved, the campaign has seen significant success in the short time it has been operating. Speaking to The University Times, Marta Megne, Vice President of the Latvian Association of Students, says that the campaign has been really helpful for seeing how other movements deal with the practicalities of running student campaigns and “things that may not seem that they matter but in the end they make the student movement seem more powerful”. They joined the campaign after attending the European Students Convention in Bratislava. “We didn’t expect that we’re going to be part of it given that the situation is stable education wise and we didn’t wish to complain, but in the end we realised that we’ll have to join in and even though the future seemed to be stable it was an interesting platform to begin with”, she explains.
Despite experiencing relative stability after promises made by government ministers regarding higher education funding, Megne “decided not to believe promises and show that the student movement can be strong if it’s needed”. Part of this show of strength is the organisation of marches and a protests centred around the Saeima, the houses of parliament located in Riga. One protest involved creating a carpet of the faces of over 600 students and laying it out in front of government buildings on the first day the Ministers of State met. As a result, ministers had to step on the students faces to enter the building. Megne explains that the reasoning behind this form of protest was that they wanted to seem like “reasonable partners to work with”. She also pointed out that they didn’t “want to be these students that always go to protests because protests is the last weapon you actually have as a student representor”. This “symbolic” protest also meant that they weren’t forcing students to lose a day of their education which would defeat the general idea behind the protest.
It’s been really cool to see that other people are doing things that are on the same course and we have this ability to support each other and to learn from each other
As a result of #FundOurFuture and the connection it creates between organisations, news of this protest spread throughout several countries with various movements commending it’s originality. Speaking to The University Times, Monika Skadborg, a member of the Executive Committee of the Union of Students in Denmark, admits she’s learned a lot from simply watching what other organisations are doing: “It’s been really cool to see that other people are doing things that are on the same course and we have this ability to support each other and to learn from each other.” She’s used the campaign to look at how other groups are using social media and at the kinds of protests people are planning. “You can see we’re not alone and we can do things and we have the same issues and we can show solidarity, but it’s also just in terms of tools and learning from each other. It’s also quite cool”, she explains. Education in Denmark is paid for by the government yet the cost of living is extremely high. Despite receiving a grant, many students have to either take out a loan or get a job to support their time in college. A new government plan aims to cut this grant by 20 per cent and replace it with an interest-free loan. To combat this, Skadborg and her colleagues have been organising alliances with various trade unions, even those who have no direct links to the education sector: “There’s not always been so much solidarity between us but now it’s like a common struggle that we all care about education and that’s really important.” They also organised a protest at the start of October which saw over 43,000 people turn up to protest the proposed cuts. Skadborg remarks that it’s the largest organised march of a group of people that the country has seen in a time of peace. Skadborg recognises that #FundOurFuture is still in it’s early days but recognises the potential for a larger international movement: “I know it’s in the beginning and it needs to be started up, but I think it has some potential.”
#FundOurFuture isn’t the only network of international organisations that the Danes are involved with. They also have frequent meetings with their Nordic neighbours to discuss education policies. After the government proposed introducing a system of funding similar to what Norway has, Skadborg and her colleagues were able to contact Norwegian organisations and enquire as to what the impact of such a system is on their students. “They were really helpful in providing us information and arguments to the consequences and counter-arguments to whatever crazy statistics the government had found”, explains Skadborg.
I think the success of this campaign is about how it supports and strengthens students. If that’s quite simply a student movement in one corner of the world feeling like they’re not alone that’s a success in and of itself
The #FundOurFuture campaign has moved beyond Europe with organisations in North and South America, Africa and Asia becoming involved. Speaking to The University Times via email, Bilan Arte, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, says that #FundOurFuture is “a global iteration of the domestic campaign for free education that we are fighting in Canada”. Currently, the Canadian student movement are trying to encourage the introduction of free post-secondary education at both university and college level. “Our campaign highlights the issue of inaccessibility when it comes to high fees and high student debt for young people in our country to attend university or college”, explains Arte.
This is exactly the type of impact that Button and her colleagues seek. Button believes that the success of the campaign will be largely “unquantifiable” but so long as students feel supported, that’s exactly what they’re looking for: “I think the success of this campaign is about how it supports and strengthens students and what they take from it, and if that’s quite simply a student movement in one corner of the world feeling like they’re not alone in the struggles they’re facing, and that actually they have the support of all these student movements from around the world, that’s a success in and of itself.”
In an Irish context, having the support of #FundOurFuture and all the organisations associated with it has fed directly into what the Irish student movement is attempting to do. Speaking to The University Times, Jack Leahy, Deputy President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), says that #FundOurFuture “fits really well for us because our national campaign is around education as a public good and bringing in lots of different stakeholders in our education and that’s really the focus of what it’s trying to do as well”.
This is exactly the impact Button and the others involved in the setting up of the campaign were hoping for: “We never intended it to be a rallying call to get out onto the streets and protest. It was that we want to have a platform that shows different ways of creative campaigning in a way that works for your context, because we recognise that in some countries there wasn’t a culture of being out and protesting. For some countries that might be for kind of social reasons but for some other countries that’s very political and a lot of that comes down to safety of protesting and the right to protest.”
