Students Set to Strike Over College Rents Rise

By Daniel King

  From The Cambridge Evening News, 16th Oct 1999

Students at one of the most famous colleges in the world are set to begin a rent strike.

Mat Coakley has resigned as president of the Junior Common Room at Cambridge University's King's College and is organising the strike in protest at a proposed increase in the cost of the college's accommodation of more than 60 per cent by 2004/5.

Representatives of most of the university's colleges attended a meeting of the council of Cambridge University Students' Union (CUSU). They unanimously agreed to back college rent strikes and to investigate the possibility of a university-wide stoppage.

CUSU said the rise recommended by a Bursars' Committee report, which came into effect last year, would put up the average college rent by a third by 2004/5, making it the most expensive university outside London and deterring less well-off applicants. It claimed the average fixed weekly cost per student would be £70, including a fixed £10 meals fee. Mr Coakley said the figure at King's might be as high as £75, compared to a national average of £45, in figures compiled by the National Union of Students.

Last year Mr Coakley was CUSU officer for the Target Schools project, which aims to persuade pupils from less privileged backgrounds that the university is for people of ability, not wealth. He said: "Throughout its history Cambridge University has been synonymous with privilege and social elitism. This rent hike will make that the case for its future."

Students who strike when college bills are due in three weeks will be asked either to write out a cheque to the college, but not hand it over, or to pay in the same amount to a strike fund. CUSU president Tristan Jones said that a demonstration against the rent rise was scheduled for next Saturday and the CUSU would ask colleges to freeze rents while proper negotiations took place. Ian Barter, first bursar at King's College, said he had not been informed of the strike and therefore had no comment to make.