Goldsmiths UCU Profile picture
Sep 29, 2020 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Dear Goldsmiths Students, we would like to express our apologies at the lack support you have been given by @GoldsmithsUoL to prepare for the coming academic year. Teaching staff have also been left in the dark about following issues 1/8
Poor provision for online teaching:
We’ve not received adequate information or training to prepare for online teaching. It was only a week before term that ITS confirmed what platforms we should use, but not whether they will be able to deliver all modes of teaching required 2/8
Late Timetabling:

We’ve not yet received final timetables for teaching. This doesn’t give us confidence in the resilience of College systems in dealing with the large volume of online teaching we expect to do 3/8
Poor library provision:

We’ve only just received finalised online reading lists. We also have been informed that we cannot order required online materials (other than limited amounts of key readings). We have also been informed that the library budget has been cut 4/8
No support for preparation of online teaching:

To adequately prepare online online teaching requires significant time from teaching staff. We have received no additional support for these activities 5/8
No confirmation of graduate tutor contracts:

This has meant we are unable to prepare classes, or train these tutors, as appropriate. Graduate tutors do the majority of interfacing with students throughout their degree programmes. 6/8
No definitive guidance over F2F teaching:

We have not been told definitively whether teaching will be online for the first term. 7/8
Given the lack of regard the College has had to these issues so far, we expect @goldsmithsUoL and @FCorner to take responsibility for the inevitable student dissatisfaction teaching staff will face. 8/8

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More from @GoldsmithsUCU

Apr 15, 2024
🌪️Pushback against redundancies and cuts at Goldsmiths, and across the sector, has been palpable in the press. 🌪️Here’s some of the recent media coverage collated:
‘Goldsmiths and SOAS latest to face strikes over job cuts’, Times Higher Education @timeshighered Fri Feb 29 2024 timeshighereducation.com/news/goldsmith…
‘Academics warn of 'world without Shakespeare' as universities slash arts’, The Stage @TheStage Mar 26 2024
thestage.co.uk/news/academics…
Read 14 tweets
Jun 14, 2022
🔥EXPLOSIVE thread on #TaxiGate @GoldsmithsUoL: An FOI request has revealed that Goldsmiths warden @FCorner has spent nearly £20k 😲 of College money on taxis since she took up her post in August 2019. 1/14 Image
2/ The reply to the FOI request begins by ‘apologis[ing] for the delay in responding’. The scandalous content of what is revealed probably explains why there was so much dithering. #CornersCabs
3/ The FOI reply covers 3 academic years 2018-21. During 2018-19, the previous warden, Pat Loughrey, was in post. For part of 2019-20, we were in lockdown. During 2020-21, staff worked from home. So how did @FCorner manage to rake up such obscene taxi bills?
Read 14 tweets
Apr 30, 2022
STATEMENT ON REDUNDANCIES 🔥
Revealed: the true brutality of @FCorner's Tory-inspired wrecking ball and how we are fighting back to defend the integrity of @GoldsmithsUoL. Link to our full statement (some highlights below). goldsmithsucu.org/2022/04/29/guc… 🧵1/20
2/The way that stage 3 of the redundancy process has been carried out is in violation of the College’s own policy on managing organisational change.
3/Just prior to the announcement of the cuts at 7.08pm on a Fri evening, on Tues 5 April the college proudly announced the appointment of 6 new senior posts in the new centralised Professional Services (PS) structure, and have since begun sacking PS staff on pay grades 4 & 5.
Read 20 tweets
Oct 19, 2021
@GoldsmithsUoL Warden @FCorner today wrote to all staff to ask them to vote against industrial action. The email contained many misleading statements, which we address here. Tl;dr: SMT is set on its plan of unnecessary and damaging mass job cuts. Vote YES to stop them. 1/8
Management’s plan is for up to 52 staff to be issued redundancy letters before the end of the year, yet here the Warden admits the most recent accounts will not be published until *after* some staff are dismissed. Are these cuts really required due to College finances, or... 2/8
..are they the latest stage of @FCorner’s efforts, since she was appointed in 2019, to centralise control + “streamline” @GoldsmithsUoL? Contrary to what she claims, our Warden announced huge cuts *before” the pandemic hit. Her first plan (“Evolving Goldsmiths”) was defeated..3/8
Read 9 tweets
Sep 28, 2021
BREAKING: We now know the full picture on redundancies planned by @GoldsmithsUoL - at least 52 jobs. Alongside 32 professional services staff, SMT today served notice they are seeking to cut the equivalent of 20 full time lecturers in English & Creative Writing and History. 1/4
There will likely be more job cuts to follow. We learned in yesterday's redundancy "consultation launch" (from which some of our reps were ejected) there will be a further three waves ("tranches") of "restructuring" professional services. 2/4
And the scale of the savings SMT seeks means more academic job cuts are very likely. 52 jobs lost at a small institution is huge. Workload would increase, courses would close, student experience would suffer. 3/4
Read 4 tweets
Sep 28, 2021
🤣@GoldsmithsUoL SMT's PR team has devoted 400 words in the latest "Recovery Briefing" rebutting our tweets... and the main clarification they wish to make is that the now infamous "Managing Resistance to Change" presentation was not shared by accident, but on purpose! 🤣😂1/4
And in case you missed it, here's the presentation management is so eager to stress they fully intended to share with colleagues 2/4
In any case, colleagues were indeed "directed to an intranet page containing a presentation meant for managers" - members (who were not managers) were able to access the materials, which were later removed (or perhaps placed in a special folder only accessible to managers). 3/4
Read 4 tweets

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