As we (the public) now know the Government went to war on illegal and unsubstantiated ground s. At the time of Tent State people everywhere watched in horror as the war unfolded. Whilst British schools, colleges and universities were told that 'Britain is in debt' and 'education budgets must be cut' we asked er.....'excuse me Mr Blair, so why are you spending £7 billion on an illegal war upon which you fooled the public into financing?'. So students and educators reclaimed the 'Ivory Tower' from the hands of authority and put a spanner in the works to challenge these Government bloody lies.
What were we doing? Tent State is an education festival that started at Rutgers University in 2003 in remembrance of the students who were shot by authorities at Kent State University for protesting against the Vietnam War. Tent State has been adopted by a number of universities across the United States; and now the UK.
Each Tent State University can tackle something different; Tent State University of Sussex was an attack on government’s expenditure on war, which therefore neglected far more beneficial things such as the right to education. We camped out and occupaied the centre of campus with support flooding in from allover the world, including notable the eminent Noam Chomsky. The privatisation of university allows only the wealthy to go to university and come out with the least debt and the poorer to be plummeted into a debt chasm of approximately twenty thousand pounds. Tent State University of Sussex was about sharing examples and demonstrating of alternative free education systems, reclaiming the campus that we pay for and demonstrate how education and should be prioritised and more effectively utilised.
