THE UNIVERSITY PROCTORS have refused to announce whether there are any results from the Student Disciplinary Panel’s (SDP) investigation into the “serious irregularities” discovered in May’s OUSU referendum on its affiliation to the National Union of Students (NUS).

The University’s regulations state, “No complaint made by the Proctors shall be heard by the Student Disciplinary Panel more than six months after the date of the first interview, unless the Chairman or ViceChairman sitting on that occasion decides at his or her discretion to allow the complaint to be heard on the grounds that there is good cause for the delay.” Cherwell understands that it has now been more than six months since the complaint was made and interviews began.

OUSU President Louis Trup told Cherwell, “It has been a long time since the NUS referendum, and I am frustrated with the lack of response from the Proctors on the issue. On many occasions I have asked the Proctors for more information about the current status of the investigation, but they have not told me anything. I understand that if the Proctors do make a decision, this will not be made public, which for me is a highly frustrating element to the way in which they operate. This concern can now be voiced by OUSU officers, as we have this year managed to get OUSU representation on the university committee which oversees the work of the Proctors’ Office.

“I have made it clear at many OUSU Council meetings that if the investigation finds that individuals engaged in electoral malpractice, then I believe they should be held accountable for their actions.

“OUSU has adopted a new voting system to ensure that any future referendum or election cannot be manipulated in the same way.”

A University spokesperson responded, saying, “The subjects and outcomes of all Proctors’ investigations are confidential and are not made public.”

A Junior Tribunal declared the referendum, which was held to determine whether or not OUSU should remain affiliated to the NUS, void on Monday 26th May 2014. This was after the leader of the campaign to disaffiliate, Jack Matthews, highlighted misuse of the Unique Voter Codes (UVCs) issued for the online voting system mi-vote.com in an official complaint. Matthews declined to comment when Cherwell approached him on the expiration of his complaint.

It was reported at the time that over 1,000 extra voter codes were used to cast votes for ‘Believe In Oxford’, supposedly all from the same location.

Last year’s OUSU President Tom Rutland, who was in charge of the student union at the time of the referendum and led the ‘Yes to NUS’ campaign, told Cherwell, “It’s frustrating that the University hasn’t publicly said anything since it was referred to them. Students deserve to know the outcome of the investigation into evidence that the vote was intentionally sabotaged.”

Last May, following the announcement of the referendum being declared void, Jack Matthews said to Cherwell, “I welcome the result of the Junior Tribunal – it is absolutely right that the entire Referendum has been voided.

“We must now wait for a response from other investigations which will seek to discover who perpetrated this crime.”

Other students also expressed their frustation at the lack of news.

Third year Hilda’s student Helena Dollimore said, “Either the University is incompetent and hasn’t managed to work out how the referendum was fiddled and which IP address was responsible, or they’re deliberately keeping the results of the investigation secret. If the latter, it sends out completely the wrong message for a university to effectively not punish serious electoral fraud, which gets you jail time in the real world.”

Louis Trup, who was then OUSU Presidentelect, remarked at the time, “I am genuinely shocked to hear of the electoral malpractice that has led to the results of the NUS referendum being declared void. It’s obviously a terrible thing to happen, but I just can’t really believe anybody cared enough to go to the trouble of sending off so many votes.”

Rutland took a motion to OUSU Council in 7th Week of Trinity last year to reaffiliate to the NUS after the news that the referendum had been tampered with was revealed to the general student population. OUSU then decided to vote through his motion.

The Oxford University Student Handbook reveals that the Student Disciplinary Panel, the University body to which the case was referred, can punish those who break regulations in several different ways. The body can issue punishments ranging from “a fine of any size” to rusticating students for “whatever period of time it [the SDC] thinks fit” or even expulsion from membership of the University.

Second year chemist Harry Bush told Cherwell, “The actual NUS referendum sort of passed me by really, although my friends talked about the fact it might have been rigged quite a lot. It does seem a bit bizarre that we haven’t been told anything about what’s been happening since the investigation was launched.”

Another student said they hoped “the entire University would be informed of the developments soon.”

The student conduct section of the University regulations makes clear that complaints of this nature are supposed to be dealt with in full confidentiality.

The same section also maintains, “All those who are involved in procedures for investigating an allegation, including witnesses, representatives, and persons providing evidence and/or advice, have a duty to maintain confidentiality.”

It is unknown if any actions have been taken towards any students and whether any more information will be made public.

EXETER COLLEGE JCR has voted in favour of updating their harassment policy and encouraging College authorities to adopt the changes, in line with the recent updates made to University wide harassment policy.

The new sexual harassment policy adopted by the University last year following a successful campaign by OUSU and ‘It Happens Here’, is designed to clarify the process of complaints.

However, this change in university policy does not affect individual colleges, leading to criticisms from some students that harassment policies in college can still have more complicated guidelines, making them less clear, secure and supportive.

OUSU’s Vice-President for Women, Anna Bradshaw, urged students in December to contact college representatives and encourage them to update internal harassment policy.

The motion at Exeter was proposed by third year English student Ella Richards, who has been involved in the campaign to encourage colleges to change their policies, and seconded by JCR welfare respresentative Beatrice Natzler.

Natzler told Cherwell, “At the JCR meeting we discussed the benefits of the new harassment policy. One benefit is that procedures are laid out much more clearly than in the old policy.

“The new policy also allows someone making a complaint to skip steps, such as mediation, that they might not feel comfortable with.”

Exeter JCR President Tutku Bektas also commented, “We recognise the sheer number of harassment incidents happening around the University every year and to this end, we want to make sure that there is a more certain and sound framework which would allow the college to deal with such sensitive issues in a more efficient and professional way.”

The JCR President also emphasised the importance of the new policies and bringing colleges on board, telling Cherwell, “The Exeter JCR believes that this is a crucial topic and we will be taking the necessary steps to campaign for it.”

Alice Vacani, who has been working on the campaign at Hertford, commented, “I’m really proud of the work undertaken by Ella and other members of Exeter JCR to push this through.”

Exeter’s decision is part of a wider drive by the Harassment Policy Working group to encourage students throughout the University to put forward updated and clear college harassment policies.

The Harassment Policy working group has been holding equipping training, which has attracted students from a number of colleges who want to change their college policies, whilst the University’s Equalities and Diversity unit has been providing information on how the policies work and how they can be incorporated by colleges.

After her successful lobbying to have the university policy updated, Bradshaw commented, “I have been excited to hear this week that a number of common rooms have already begun to work with their colleges to update college harassment policies.

“Good harassment policies are absolutely vital to protecting and supporting students, particularly women students.”

Our findings from this investigation suggests 55 per cent of Oxford’s student tenants were dissatisfied with the conditions of their private house.

The problems that students brought up in both our survey and interviews ranged from damp and mould – reported by 30 per cent of respondents – to more severe problems, which potentially demonstrate a breach of the law.

Other articles in this investigation:

• “Did you parents tell you to ask this?” – Samuel Rutishauser-Mills considers landlords and letting agencies “taking advantage” of students
• “Everything is completed to the bare minimum“ – Megan Eldred describes her nightmare experience with S&C
• “They tried to throw the book at us without reading the book first” – Jonathon Turnbull looks at the case of student tenants who successfully reduced a £400 bill to £35

“A cynical and greedy industry”

Fire alarms and boilers were left broken for weeks. Agencies allegedly lied about the rent they owed students. Some students told us how the houses for which they had signed tenancy agreements were not fully built. Tenants were reportedly forced to clean up raw sewage from their conservatory floor after a pipe burst, the result of shoddy maintenance work.

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%10904%%[/mm-hide-text]A student told us that the manhole for the sewage pipe that was under their carpet had not been secured properly and burst. The tenants were forced to clean up the leaked sewage themselves.

One student told us about being charged £2,000 for electricity used by builders working on the house.

Numerous complaints were also made about the attitudes of letting agents. Comments such as “Did your parents tell you to ask this?” were common, leading to more bad feeling between letting agents and tenants.

“They took such a long time to respond, perhaps hoping that we’d just give up”

Many of the students we interviewed were angry about the length of time it took agencies to reply to their emails, some of them being pleas for urgently needed repairs. In fact, only two of the agencies we contacted – Premier and
Taylor’s – appeared to take the concerns of the people we interviewed seriously by committing to investigating them further.

A spokesperson from Taylor’s told us, “Each property varies depending on what we do for the Landlord (Introduction Only or Fully Managed),” and suggested that the student in question get in contact with the agency. The student told Cherwell she had done this on many occasions.

Some considered this reluctance to reply a tactic by letting agents to force students to give up on their demands. One commented, “They took such a long time to respond to our emails, perhaps hoping that we’d just give up.”

The problem of whether it was the landlords or the letting agents who were responsible for various problems was also a recurrent theme throughout the investigation. Grace Maher, renting with Premier, told C+ that the agency “washed their hands of us”, with Premier claiming that the house was “unmanaged” — in other words, not Premier’s responsibility, but the landlord’s.

Although this investigation centres upon a few agencies – S&C, Scott Fraser, Premier, Taylor’s and RMA – we also received complaints about students’ experiences with others, such as Manor House and Digs Property Management.

The latter agency responded to these allegations, saying, “We have no record of the complaints made against us about dehumidifiers and rodents […] but that might be because a lot of problems are dealt with directly through the
landlords.” 

They said that they were keen to hear about any more problems.

The students who we interviewed above all stressed the importance of researching letting agencies before signing anything, while one advised, “Don’t be afraid to fight and be forceful.”

Premier

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%10900%%[/mm-hide-text] 

Premier were one of three letting agencies to respond after C+ sent them a list of the issues that the students we spoke to had with them. One of their partners asked me to bring names and addresses “in relation to the ‘several complaints’ you have had”, and agreed to investigate the issues further.

One of these complaints relates to someone who says they were charged £400 for cleaning, despite being told by a member of staff that they were taking good care of the property. Meanwhile, the check-out report of the house next door stated a similar level of cleanliness, but were only charged a mere £35 – Jonathon Turnbull’s piece relates how the tenants successfully got the cleaning bill reduced.

The Premier partner told me that the person who dealt with that house had since been fired, commenting that the “£400 charge sounds a bit excessive, especially if they are taking care of the property”.

Another case related to an eight bedroom house on Divinity Road, which was in the process of being converted from a six bedroom property. Grace Maher, who graduated last year, told C+ how “the date that we were supposed to be moving into the property was delayed three times.

“All eight of us eventually arrived to find the house half-completed (without any warning from the landlord or the agents): there weren’t stairs between the top floors; there wasn’t a full wall to our living room; there weren’t doors to some of the rooms; all the rooms were filled with building materials.”

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%10903%%[/mm-hide-text] 1 in 5 students reported unfinished building work or poor quality maintenance

She explained, “The landlady was initially defensive (claiming it wasn’t her fault but the builders’) but became apologetic (especially when questioned as to why she hadn’t warned us before we all made our way to Oxford) and eventually agreed to refund us some of our expenses.

“Premier were totally useless – they have an office about 200m from the house but claimed to know nothing about the building works and washed their hands of us. We’d each paid £100 in agency fees by this point, but they claimed that since the property was managed by the landlord, it really wasn’t their problem, and they didn’t offer any compensation or apologies.

“The house was completed about a week later with quite a lot of shoddy work which caused problems, such as mould, leaks, and electrical issues.”

When C+ raised the case with Premier, the partner knew immediately which house I meant, commenting that their move-in day was “an absolute nightmare”. He had “rung the landlady every day throughout the week leading up to the move in date. While she assured me that the property would be ready at first, she stopped answering her phone a few days beforehand.”

He added, “There’s only so much you can do as a letting agent aside from going down to the house and doing the building work yourself.”

Responding to the claims that they “washed their hands” of the tenants, he reminded me of the difference between “managed” and “unmanaged” properties – in the former case, a landlord uses an agency to manage leases and tenants, while the landlord deals with “unmanaged” properties directly.

In response to the suggestion that students are seen as an “easy target”, the partner told me, “When a student walks through the door they’re a client just like everyone else. What I often find quite scary is how easily students sign up to leases without taking it away and thinking about it, and we then get calls from parents saying, ‘Why have you made my child sign this?’”

The partner said he was open to discussing with students their feedback from their private housing experiences, informing me that Premier had been in contact with Brookes Student Union representatives in particular. “You’re welcome to come and do half a day’s work with me so you can see first hand the respect we give each and every one of our clients,” he told me.

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%10901%%[/mm-hide-text]