Cambridge students to stage "rent strike"

By Ben Russell, Education Correspondent

  From The Independent, 21st Oct 1999

CAMBRIDGE STUDENTS yesterday threatened a "rent strike" if academics refuse to scrap planned increases in accommodation bills.

More than 240 undergraduates at King's College say they will tear up rent bills due later this month unless the college agrees to peg hall fees to the national average.

The undergraduates, who are drawn mainly from state schools, fear the increasing charges will make the college too costly for pupils from deprived backgrounds. A series of planned rent increases would increase accommodation costs by 8 per cent above inflation for the next four years.

Mat Coakley, chairman of the college's action alliance group which is organising the strike, said: "Cambridge students do not deserve special treatment but if the college is serious about attracting the best from all backgrounds it cannot raise [accommodation costs] too high." Mr Coakley, a third-year social and political sciences student, said private accommodation in Cambridge was in short supply.

"Two-thirds of the students have pledged to join the strike. We had a big meeting and speaker after speaker said they would not be here if they had to pay these charges. I have not seen such strength of feeling before," he said.

Dr Rob Wallach, a senior tutor at the college, said he had not been approached formally by the protesters. He said: "This is one of the few colleges in Oxbridge which takes the same number of students from the maintained sector as from the independent sector. If their concern is about access then that is something shared by the university and the college and we have tried to do something about that for 30 years."