On Monday 12th April, 30 students seized the Syndicate Room of the Old Schools, the administrative centre of University management, in the first occupation at this University since 2010. With the short-term memory of a place like this, it seemed unprecedented, and was initially for many a source of both confusion and scepticism. Yet as each day and night passed, as the occupation established itself and as University management made further concessions to the occupiers’ three demands, it began to seem increasingly that this more drastic form of protest is exactly what is necessary in a political situation so urgent and significant as the one in which we currently find ourselves.

The week of the occupation saw at least one mass rally outside Senate House or march through the city every day, on issues from pensions to management to divestment. Over the past four weeks of industrial action, there has been a growing appetite for change in the way that the University is run – and this may prove to be one of the greatest legacies of the strikes, for our particular institution at least. Of all the occupiers’ demands, the one that seems to have had the greatest resonance is demand two: for Stephen Toope to attend an open meeting where students and staff can speak to him directly about their concerns with University management.

“Occupation, in many ways, is an opportunity for the instantiation of a positive vision – a living dream of a better university”

This kind of direct participation is something that the University has not seen in recent memory, perhaps ever; to be very frank, it was something I could not properly imagine until I was there in the room myself, even after Toope conceded to having this meeting on day four of the occupation. And when I was there, an hour after the occupiers left Old Schools, what I felt most was wonder – with over 500 people in attendance, questioning the vice-chancellor and holding him to public account, engaging with issues that for all of my time here previously had seemed so difficult to even reach the ears of management. As an escalation of ongoing direct action by both Cambridge Defend Education and Cambridge Zero Carbon Society against ‘Corporation Cambridge’, the occupation’s success in bringing about this meeting with Toope has shown the power of grassroots organising to create substantive democratic engagement outside the prescribed, inaccessible paths.

Most importantly, it shifts the narrative of what democracy and accountability really mean here at the University of Cambridge. Among the student body, there seems to be a persistent sense of dissatisfaction with CUSU and with student activism more broadly, based largely on a perception of democratic deficit. Yet an almost exclusive focus on these concerns often abandons a more difficult and fundamental engagement with what the ‘student voice’ should mean: the University’s responsibility for the care and welfare of its students, and the University’s democratic accountability to its members.

What struck me most strongly about Stephen Toope’s unprecedented letter to The Times on the fifth day of the occupation, denouncing the marketisation of higher education publicly for the first time, was its prominent reference to the anger of students and the concerns expressed through these strikes and protests. Our belief in and constant organising for a University that truly belongs to us all is something we cannot lose if we want to seriously tackle any of the most pressing issues currently facing higher education today, from Prevent to ethical investment to the otherwise seemingly inexorable march of marketisation.

This open meeting, however, is far from the end. Staff strikes will continue into next term, and while Toope has now had to engage directly in dialogue with students, there is still a matter of exactly what he has said and, most importantly, what the University’s management will do. While Toope repeatedly condemned marketisation during the open meeting, he was perhaps less clear about what exactly he planned to do about it – something of a pattern for the event.

Even as the action stretches into Easter and exams and then into next year, it is vitally important that students keep the pressure on University management, and take the opportunities opened up by the meeting both to hold Toope to his word and to push the University for more. In the fight for the future of our education, the success of this term’s actions has given us unprecedented momentum and resources, demonstrated by the fact that students had the capacity to manage a successful occupation. But our greatest dangers, as ever, are the transient nature of the student body and the constant pressure to return to our studies and forget.

Looking to the future, occupation itself may prove to be our most radically imaginative as well as one of our most immediately effective tools of protest. The teach-outs organised by UCU and various other staff and student organisations throughout the strikes have been an incredible demonstration of the potential a liberated education can have; through the work of the occupiers in the rooms of Old Schools it took a more tangible, physical shape. Even as a day visitor, I encountered in the occupation a space for collaborative teaching and learning, for mutual care and the sharing of knowledge, the like of which I had never previously experienced on such a scale at this university. Student activism is most often derided for being too angry, never satisfied, and always against. Occupation, in many ways, is an opportunity for the instantiation of a positive vision – a living dream of a better university.