Sussex
University management have singled out five students for their involvement in the anti-privatisation campaign, and a recent occupation in support of striking staff. The students have been suspended from their courses and excluded from campus. The reason given includes an alleged "threat to the safety and well-being of students". Sussex managers have repeatedly called in riot police to attack student protests on the campus

University of London
Meanwhile in London, an occupation of Senate House, University of London, was broken up by the Metropolitan Police's Territorial Support Group after only a few hours. No injunction or eviction order was granted and no warning was given. Witnesses say police simply stormed into the building, alongside university security, attacking occupiers and bystanders alike.

Never really seen anything like it; no nightsticks, no warnings, just swoop from nowhere then punching and chasing gathered crowd #occupysh— Huw Lemmey (@spitzenprodukte) December 4, 2013

Confused bystanders and spectators ran for the gates, coppers chased them, pushed them to the ground #occupysh— Huw Lemmey (@spitzenprodukte) December 4, 2013

All happened so fast hard to tell if the violence was planned or cops out of control, but scale of op was stunning #occupysh— Huw Lemmey (@spitzenprodukte) December 4, 2013

Major police violence reported in Senate House foyer: kicking and beating students at random— David Graeber (@davidgraeber) December 4, 2013

Wow that was just incredibly violent— David Graeber (@davidgraeber) December 4, 2013

But as events this week have proved, some young people remain incensed – and not just about fees, but a tangle of issues that runs from the privatisation of university jobs and facilities, through the low-end pay and conditions of workers on campus, to what many students see as the toxic effects of higher education being pushed towards the logic of the free market. Particularly in London, there is also increasing anger about the recurrent presence of police on campus.

Over the last week or so, there have also been occupations and protests at universities in Birmingham, Brighton, Exeter, Warwick, Derry, and Liverpool – barely reported in the mainstream press, but chronicled and sustained via social media. Outwardly, their main trigger was Tuesday's strike by academics and other university employees over real-terms pay cuts and the "miserly" offer of a 1% rise. But the people involved say the student protests have now acquired a momentum of their own.

The police, he reckons, are implementing lessons learned over the last few years: "They saw what happened in 2010 and they didn't know what the hell was going on. But what they did in 2011 – massive kettling, mass arrests – put a lot of people off. They want to basically bludgeon student activism on campus. That's what we're seeing, certainly from the Met."