An outdoor demonstration orchestrated by climate activists, Just Stop Oil, unfolded dramatically at King’s College Cambridge when a protester employed a fire extinguisher to spray paint upon one of the institution’s buildings. The paint attacks, using a vibrant hue of orange, were not confined to Cambridge alone but spread like wildfire across major universities of England, including Leeds, Manchester, Cambridge, Bristol, Exeter, Oxford, Falmouth, Sussex, Birmingham, and UCL.
More than mere random acts of vandalism, these protests were designed as a public condemnation of the UK government’s initiative to license new oil and gas ventures. These demonstrations echo the collective sentiment of the platoon of activists, burning brightly in the wake of approvals being granted last month to the Rosebank oil field, the UK’s mightiest untapped oil terrain predicted to house as much as 300 million barrels of oil.
Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, found itself cloaked in fiery orange as videos featuring the protest at the Great Hall of the University of Leeds took the site by storm. Recent Leeds graduate Sam Holland was the central character in the footage that captured him spewing orange paint on the building amid verbal allegations of the university’s complicity in genocide through its graduate programs.
Following these startling developments, a representative from the University of Leeds affirmed their unwavering commitment to climate change. They expressed dismay over the protest escalating to defacement but redoubled their pledge to tackle this dire global crisis via the deployment of a £174 million Climate Plan aimed at achieving net-zero emissions by 2030.
Things reached a fever pitch when Chiara Sarti, a protester at the University of Cambridge, channeled her dissentient energy to thrust a wave of orange over the neo-Gothic walls of King’s College, much to the chagrin of onlookers. The university campus, established in the progressive reign of King Henry VI in 1441, witnessed police intervention and the arrest of a 24-year-old in the wake of reported criminal damage.
Among further incidents, the Allen Gilbert Building at the University of Manchester and a library building at the University of Birmingham were besmirched with paint, leading to arrests and intense clean-up operations. The University of Birmingham made it clear that while they uphold the fundamental right to peaceful protest, they are in no way amenable to defacement and the resultant disturbance affecting staff, students, and guests.
Other universities struck by the wave of discord included Exeter, where the glass facade of The Forum bore the brunt of the paint assault, and Falmouth, where a peaceful protest was superseded by the criminal damage to a building. The reign of dissent continued unabated with a Sussex University library witnessing a deluge of paint, leading to the arrest of a 20-year-old protestor named Oscar.
Just Stop Oil has hinted that these protests are merely the beginning of an extensive campaign of student resistance aimed at safeguarding the future from what they perceive to be an unsustainable and dangerous obsession with fossil fuels.
