18 January 2018 Vol. 19 Lent Issue 1
www.tcs.cam.ac.uk
Cambridge Student
Robinson JCR endorses their College’s ‘Cut the Rent’ campaign News Team
T
he ‘Cut The Rent’ campaign is starting to gather momentum in Cambridge, a year and a half after students at UCL made the front pages for refusing to pay their rents. Students at Robinson College have recently launched their own ‘Cut the Rent’ petition to call for lower and fairer rents, joining the wider University campaign group in their efforts. Other colleges including Magdalene, Murray Edwards and Corpus Christi are setting their own movements in motion, with the CUSU council voting in support of the motion in November. Almost a third of all Murray Edwards undergraduates backed the college’s petition. The campaign first kicked off at UCL, spreading quickly to other University campuses. UCL students launched it with three ambitions in mind. Firstly to “address the problems in halls while people are still living in them, no one deserves to live in squalor”. To “improve living conditions instead of demolishing these halls and to continue to freeze the rents in halls”. The peak of their campaigning was achieved in July of last summer when the students received a £1.5 million pledge from the university, following a five month rent strike. More than 1,000 students took part, holding back in excess of £1 million from their universities. This November, the campaigners also won an accommodation bursary of £600,000. £300,000 of this will
be “automatically allocated” to domestic students, £200,000 for international students and a £100,000 fund for any students living in UCL Accommodation. The petition at Robinson, which currently has around 80 signatures at the time of writing, states that the college has significant problems with access and that despite being “one of the most egalitarian and relaxed colleges in which to live and work”, its appeal has been “undermined by the unaffordable rents they charge”. Matt Kite, one of Robinson College’s ‘Cut the Rent’ founders has said, “Robinson students pay some of the highest rents at any college, and the number of rooms in the most affordable category is far too low; all but three of the 2017 freshers have to pay more than £1600 per term for a 10-week lease. Continuing to charge students so much, and ignoring the repeated attempts of successive JCR committees to prevent further increases, flies in the face of the college’s stated commitment to improving access to the college and to creating an ‘egalitarian’ atmosphere for those studying here. So long as students continue to pay extortionate rates for their rooms, the material barriers to access will remain and welfare will suffer. We hope that college will respond quickly to students’ concerns and cut the rent.” Robinson College grounds, the centre of the ‘Cut the Rent’ campaign Continued on page 4
CREDIT: iván merker