Students to step up action on rent rises

By Beth Hale

  From The Cambridge Evening News, 19th Jan 2000

MORE than 1,000 students at Cambridge University are set to do battle against rent rises by staging the largest strike on record.

Students from eight colleges have pledged to go on rent strike this term if a solution to plans to increase rents by a third within five years is not found.

The largest strike on record at Cambridge University Student Union (CUSU) was in 1977 when approximately 70 students went on strike in protest at their college's investments in apartheid South Africa.

Protesting students at King's, Jesus and Trinity colleges have been allowed back into their college rooms despite not having paid last term's bills.

And the striking students look likely to be joined this term by students from Fitzwilliam, Pembroke, St John's, Selwyn and New Hall.

Tristan Jones, CUSU president, said: "There was widespread concern among students that colleges would take the opportunity to force vulnerable students to pay their bills before being allowed back into residence and therefore undermine the strike.

"However, college authorities seem to have realised that this would seriously damage their own standing in the eyes of their students - especially in those colleges where the governing bodies have not even officially recognised the strikes."

CUSU is also encouraging students to write to their home MP asking him or her to sign Early Day Motion 76 - a motion currently at the House of Commons asking the Government to investigate the rent increases, which students say could damage attempts to widen access.

Charles Larkum, head of the Bursars Committee's resources and charges working group, said: "The colleges are going to stay firm on the rent changes.

"They do understand that this is unwelcome and will raise opposition. They are not unsympathetic to the issues students are raising about access.

However, they believe the publicity students are seeking is doing more damage to access than the action of colleges in raising rents."

He explained that colleges had no wish to inflame to situation so students had been allowed back in for the new term, but he said there would be sanctions and third-year students could find themselves unable to claim their degrees until charges had been paid.