{"id":6659,"date":"2015-11-05T15:50:51","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T15:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=6659"},"modified":"2015-11-05T15:50:51","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T15:50:51","slug":"anything-but-apathetic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=6659","title":{"rendered":"Anything but apathetic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thousands of young people from across the country gathered in London yesterday (November 4) to protest government plans to slash maintenance grants, a move that would further shut the door on working class students already buckling under the pressure of rising tuition fees and skyrocketing living costs.<\/p>\n

 
\nUnite Community members were out in full force.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe had a coach of 50 from Durham and Newcastle Universities alone, and there were loads of Unite Community members from all parts of the country \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from Bristol, the Northwest, Sheffield and all over,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Unite Community regional coordinator John Coan.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe arrived in the morning and stayed all day long, handing out leaflets and explaining to passers-by why we were there \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to stand up for education as a human right.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nNews reports highlighted a minor scuffle with police caused by no more than a handful of protestors, but Coan noted that day was an entirely positive experience for the thousands of peaceful students who were there to get their message across to politicians.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a real shame that the protest was so misrepresented in the media,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bOf the thousands of students there yesterday, there were only a few who caused any trouble. But what else can you expect from the media? They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not interested in talking about the real issues. The vast, vast majority were peaceful and decent young people who were passionate about education.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nShadow chancellor John McDonnell spoke at the protest, addressing the thousands gathered at the rally in central London<\/a> over a megaphone.<\/p>\n

 
\n“Your generation has been betrayed by this government in increases to tuition fees, in scrapping the education maintenance allowance and cuts in education,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 McDonnell said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bFor generations now, one generation has handed the baton on to the next. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to ensure that the next generation has a better quality of life than the last.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nCoan hailed McDonnell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s support at the protest.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHe really hit the nail on the head when he said that education is a human right and not a commodity to be bought and sold.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shackled with debt<\/strong><\/em>
\nCurrently, full-time students in the UK whose household incomes are \u00c2\u014125,000 or less qualify for maintenance grants worth more than \u00c2\u01413,300 each year. These grants are tapered down for higher household incomes with a cut-off income of \u00c2\u014142,620.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If government proposals go through, maintenance grants will be scrapped entirely next year and will be replaced by loans, plunging young people deeper into debt.<\/p>\n

 
\nOne recent study UNITElive highlighted<\/a> last month found that an average young person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s debt to income ratio is 70 per cent. This means that for every \u00c2\u014110 that a person aged between 17 and 24 earns, a jaw-dropping \u00c2\u01417 is spent repaying debts.<\/p>\n

 
\nCoan argued that cutting maintenance grants will have a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bmassive impact on working class students, many of whom come from immigrant families\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe’ve found that more than a third of all students now say they could not afford university without these grants,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bEven with grants we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re already seeing a huge divide between wealthy and working class students,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Coan added. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because in cities like, for example, Durham, the cost of living is going through the roof. Some of the students I spoke to from Durham said in the past year alone the cost of living in the halls has gone up by \u00c2\u0141500.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis has a huge impact on working class young people who choose to go to university, because while some of their wealthier classmates can study without taking on a single grant or loan, those from poorer backgrounds have to work nights at pubs or do double shifts at Tesco\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just to get by.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nCoan encouraged students to get involved with Unite Community, which, he said, recruited dozens of new members at the protest.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnite Community gives young people a wide variety of tools to help them build community-based campaigns,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe offer lots of different training courses, mentoring, as well as logistical and practical support for their own campaigns. One example is a student campaign to end zero-hours contracts at universities \u00e2\u20ac\u201c these contracts disproportionately affect young people.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nMost of all, Coan said he was inspired by the dozens of young people he met who travelled all the way from the Northeast to stand up for their right to an education.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOlder people tend to see young people as apathetic and lazy,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bBut it was incredibly inspiring to be on the coach with such driven young people. Mind you these are students \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and they woke up at 4am, travelled hundreds of miles and dedicated the entire day, more than 20 hours, to make sure their voices were heard. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing apathetic about these young students \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re passionate, politically engaged and some of the most decent people I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever met.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nAre you a student interested in joining Unite Community? Find out more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of young people from across the country gathered in London yesterday (November 4) to protest government plans to slash maintenance grants, a move that would further shut the door on working class students already buckling under the pressure of rising tuition fees and skyrocketing living costs.   Unite Community members were out in full […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[265,375,71],"wps_subtitle":"Unite Community joins student protest against gov't cuts","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6662,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6659\/revisions\/6662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}