(Published Thursday 11th June)

As many of you are finishing your exams, I wanted to give an update on the next academic year as well as our recent statement about Black Lives Matter.

The start dates are staggered this year for new undergraduate, returning, and postgraduate taught students to allow for a phased return to campus. We have done this to ensure we bring students back to campus safely and in line with the current Government guidance, and to also ensure we embed and deliver an enhanced induction programme, this will be a programme that will be delivered throughout the semester and onwards. It is crucial to get your feedback on what you would want and need in the induction programme, please email any comments to me on this edofficer.su@manchester.ac.uk. I will be making sure it isn’t used as an opportunity to overload you with information, and we instead plan and give information across the semester and where it is appropriate.

To see the full academic year dates for 2020/21 see them here, https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/key-dates/

For years, students have lobbied for a break after the Semester 1 exam period, for the next academic year we have been able to include a week’s break after the Semester 1 exam period. It is crucial we have this, and allow you to have a break and to crucially allow our teaching-staff additional time to mark and prepare for Semester 2. It’s been great to get this for students, and I am working with the University on the plans for returning to campus and what this will look like. In line with Government Guidelines. I will update soon in the next few weeks on this.

Our Liberation and Access Sara Khan posted a statement on Black lives Matter on the 3rd of June here https://manchesterstudentsunion.com/articles/black-lives-matter-8765. This was not just a statement, the Executive Officers have worked with staff and students at the university, with UCU, Race Roots Resistance, Decolonise UoM, and our Diversity & Inclusion ambassadors to create a set of demands. These demands must be met, if the University is truly committed they will work to meet our demands, instead of focusing on previous projects and releasing statements that do not detail any future work or plans of action.

We demand:

1. That Black Studies degree programmes and modules are developed and fully funded by the University of Manchester, taking inspiration from Birmingham City University.

2. That the University invest in hiring more Black academics, and invest in new hires in the area of Black Studies and critical race approaches to traditional disciplines.

3. That the University create more disciplinary and school specific bursaries and grants (following the example of Black Lawyers Matter) targeted at Black students in areas in which they are historically underrepresented, for example, Social Sciences.

4. That the University radically reform its hate crime reporting procedure, which provides minimal support and is often re-traumatising for students, in collaboration with student and staff groups such as Diversity & Inclusion Ambassadors, Decolonise UoM and Race Roots Resistance. This procedure should take a restorative justice framework and be built by students and staff of colour, by themselves, for themselves.

5. That the University funds research into the history of alumni and other donors with commercial, financial and familial links to slavery and other colonial exploits.

6. That the history of British colonialism and its relevance to the development of modern British economic, political, social and cultural institutions -- including our Universities and all disciplines studied within them -- should be incorporated into our curricula throughout the University of Manchester.

7. That the University develop a tangible and time-specific plan to eliminate the ethnicity pay gap once and for all.

8. For the University of Manchester to donate £50,000 to the Free Black University Fund, an initiative to create a free, accessible, anti-colonial education which aims to re-distribute knowledge, and to create transformative knowledge in the Black community. https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-free-black-university

If they are truly committed they will meet these demands and create action, not hide behind another statement.