A recent advice surgery I held at St Hilda’s specifically for students brought for­ward some important and interesting issues – showing how students talking with their MP can make a difference. Some of the issues raised with me included the campaign for the Living Wage to the menace of smoking at hospital entrances. 

Student participants of the OUSU’s Living Wage Campaign came to see me to see me to discuss the campaign and let me know their view that it should be extended across all uni­versity departments and colleges, including all subcontracted staff (e.g. cleaning staff) who are often paid a lower rate. I fully sup­port the campaign and have raised this with the University’s Vice-Chancellor. 

I also met with a student who raised con­cerns that smokers are lining up just out­side the entrance to hospital, meaning that visitors and vulnerable patients entering the building are in a thoroughfare of passive smoking. 

He made an interesting suggestion, based on his experience of hospital services in Can­ada, that smoking should be legally banned within a fifteen metre radius of the hospi­tal to prevent this occurring, which I have since taken up with the Secretary of State for Health. 

Another important issue I have become in­volved with is the campaign over restrictions to student visas, after a number of concerned students contacted me to express concerns about the difficulty of acquiring visas for study. I contributed to a debate in the House of Commons on this, and regularly take up the cases of individual constituents who con­tact me about having visa difficulties. 

I have also recently met with a campaigner for fairer gambling who raised concerns with me about the increased incidence and risk of gambling amongst the student population. I very much welcome student views on this, and ideas on the best way of tackling the problem.

Student voices can make a difference, as I hope the above examples show. It sadly remains the case that 18 to 24 year olds are less likely to vote than any other age demo­graphic, and this is a statistic including a large number of students, which is a worry­ing trend. 

A number of the policies pursued by the coalition government — the unprecedented rise in tuition fees, and scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance, policies which have caused so much damage toa gen­eration of young people — show what can happen when young people’s needs are mar­ginalised in the democratic process, and they accordingly don’t exercise their vote whether through disillusionment, or for a variety of other complex reasons. 

I have always valued the contribution of our students to the local quality of life and vigour of political campaigning. As the City and European Elections come into view – and with individual electoral registration on the horizon too – it is important to underline that students can not only talk with me, but be heard through local campaigning and by exercising that most fundamental of demo­cratic rights – their vote. 

Yes

In 2012, I arrived back for my second year in Oxford to a perfect storm of bumbling contractors, inaccessible pathways and JCB-branded accommodation. Every morning I awoke to the sound of someone drilling, seemingly into my headboard. Every afternoon the fire alarm would malfunction and force us out onto the street.

Ah, what memories. In compensation, we were given a 50 per cent rent reduction for a term and a half. Compared with Exeter’s demands, this was a pretty staggering victory.

Colleges are businesses – as much as they would be loathe to admit it. I’m a Pembrokian and financial mismanagement recently brought us to the brink of bankruptcy (and coined the timeless pun: PemBroke). Now, the college is solvent, successful, and has just built a £30 million new development.

But it has come at a cost. Rent rates are some of the highest in Oxford, there’s a compulsory meal plan and room banding is done via a free market system, rather than a ballot. It’s one of the reasons why Pembroke has the largest private school intake of any Oxford college (not ChristChurch as some are led to believe) with only 46.2 per cent state acceptance over the last three years. That’s bad on paper and in practice, but Pembroke is now financially stable.

Exeter, like Pembroke, has limited financial endowments (£48,763,000) and assets (£68,650,000) and cannot be as generous as St John’s, ChristChurch or Queen’s. Most colleges are still self-regulating and rely on financial sustainability.

If colleges are businesses, students are customers. You pay for your university experience and you expect a certain level of service in return. At Exeter you are paying exponentially more than a St John’s student for an experience that is likely to be similar or inferior, and we shouldn’t be expected to passively accept that.

Striking is an effective means of pressurising colleges, but not because it will significantly impact their financial yield. The Exeter hall-strikers have already paid their battels with the extortionate £840 catering charge, so the strike is a symbolic gesture. It is equivalent to Tweeting angrily at a company’s customer services department.

We achieved the 50 per cent rent reduction at Pembroke because the college feared negative publicity, student dissatisfaction, future years living out and myriad other concerns. So the Exeter student demonstration is not futile – it will serve as a mass consumer feedback session and the message will be communicated publically.

While Pembroke’s rent reduction was negotiated without a strike, Exeter’s JCR is in a strong position. A demonstration of student dissatisfaction, with support from OUSU and covered across the university might not banish the £840 charge with the flick of a wand, but it strengthens their negotiating position enormously.

Their JCR President has an arsenal of objective data and student feedback at his disposal. If I were seeking a rent freeze, then that would fill me with positivity. It is unlikely that all demands will be met but the protest will force action.

 by Nick Hilton

No

Viva la revolución! For many, the liberal sentiment behind the chants of Oxford students is undermined by their affiliation with a university which represents everything wrong with the British class system. Setting this small irony aside for a moment, Exeter does seem to have a problem that needs solving. 

An £840 catering charge on top of payment for meals every day, is exces­sive. Exeter JCR tells us that the aver­age student spends around £13.00 a day eating in hall, with the sur­charge making it the most expensive undergraduate college. It ranks bot­tom among colleges for living cost satisfaction, and according to OUSU, it is the second most expensive col­lege in terms of student living. 

All this is likely to have an adverse impact on access and make the day to day lives of students more prob­lematic. When JCRs feel that the college has treated them unjustly, they should certainly protest. In this instance, a boycott seems to be the simplest and most obvious method for demon­strating discontent. However, I don’t think that it will have the intended results. 

This is because Exeter’s catering charge is paid upfront. Over an 8 week term, students have to pay £5.00 a day even if they don’t eat in hall. If the aim of the boycott is to withhold money from the college to force those in charge to acquiesce in students’ demands through fi­nancial necessity; it is important to remember that Exeter students have already handed over the money. The JCR is probably wasting its time. 

But even when boycotts are suc­cessful, this is undercut by a sense of collusion with the enemy. In 2011, St Hugh’s boycotted formal hall be­cause of a ban on bringing in alco­hol. The price of tickets was raised to include a moderate amount of drink provided by the college. 

The boycott worked, the ticket price was lowered. But then the JCR released a statement that said it had accepted the offer “in the spirit of compromise”. Not because they thought it was the right thing to do, but because it didn’t tread on the toes of their superiors. 

Compromise – code for abandon­ing your convictions to accommo­date those of your oppressors. 

Then again, perhaps the term “op­pressors” is too strong a term to de­scribe people that are charging you a bit too much for a three course din­ner. 

However, the fact remains. Boy­cotts are the safest form of civil disobedience. There’s no law against not attending hall. Or not riding the bus to work. Or not buying Nestlé because you disagree with their business practices. As protests go, it’s pretty safe. It’s not like you’ll get beaten, or “killed, or worse ex­pelled!” It is a kind of protest that shows your opinion, without kick­ing up too much of a fuss. It works on the assumption that it’s best to play by the rules. 

If I were an Exeter College student, I’d call off the boycott in favour of a more radical approach. I’d wait for my battels to come in next term and I wouldn’t pay them. They college can’t sent everyone down, after all. There would definitely be a financial incentive to listen to the JCR then. 

by Billy Beswick