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No. 879 Friday 14th February 2020 varsity.co.uk
Cambridge’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1947
Racist incidents towards Asian students soar amidst coronavirus fears Victor Jack Senior News Editor East Asian Cambridge students have been the target of at least six alleged racist incidents following the coronavirus outbreak which originated in Wuhan, China. The alleged incidents, which all occured in the last two weeks, saw one student’s hair physically pulled on the street and ketchup thrown at her, another told to “go back to [her] country”, and another asked if he was “carrying viruses” by a stranger. Cambridge-based summer schools with large intakes from China are also considering their options for this year’s programmes, with one already cancelling its 2020 courses.
The novel coronavirus, now known as Covid-19, originated in a fish market in Wuhan and has infected more than 63,000 people worldwide, and caused over 1000 deaths since the outbreak began in January. As of Thursday, the Chief Medical Officer for England confirmed that nine people had tested positive in the UK for the virus, which was described by Health Secretary Matt Hancock as a “serious” and “imminent threat” to the UK. Haotian Guo is a PhD student at Emmanuel and a Chinese national. On 3rd February, while attempting to sit down to eat lunch at Downing hall with Chinese friends, he said he was told by two white students the seating space was ▲ A student found pins from across China on a world map in their MCR had been moved to Wuhan
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Full story on page 2 ▶
UCU says ‘We don’t want to get to the 14th day of strikes’ Sophie Huskisson Senior News Editor Last Monday, the University and College Union (UCU) announced that 74 universities, including the University of Cambridge, will be hit with 14 days of strike action in February and March, starting on Thursday 20th February. The disputes centre on the sustaina-
bility of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and rising costs for members, and on the universities’ failure to make significant improvements on pay, equality, casualisation and workloads. Members of the USS contributed 6.35% of salary in 2011 to their pension and from October last year, now contribute 9.6%, which is due to go up to 11% in 2021, subject to review under a 2020 valuation.
According to modelling by First Actuarial, because of changes to USS, a typical member will pay around £40,000 more into their pension, but receive £200,000 less in retirement, leaving them £240,000 worse off in total. Branch Co-Secretary of UCU and English Literature Research Fellow at Gonville & Caius College, Ted Tregear, updated Varsity on the situation. He said that since the announcement in the past
week, Universities UK (UUK) – the employers’ negotiating body in the USS dispute – has told UCU they are launching a fresh consultation with their members over whether universities should cover the increases in USS pension contributions that have been passed onto members, at least until the 2020 valuation of the scheme can be agreed. UUK are to ask their member institutions (including each of the colleges) if
they want UUK to make UCU a new and better offer. UUK made an offer to UCU last year, proposing a reduction of USS members’ contributions to 9.1%. However, UCU argued that this was still a significant increase on past figures and rejected the offer. UCU wrote to the governing bodies in all colleges, urging them to respond News page 3 ▶
Inside ● Love from the East to the West Pg.10 ● Not forgetting foreign film Pg.17 ● Where does China stand? Pg.18-9