{"id":15017,"date":"2020-09-26T17:18:53","date_gmt":"2020-09-26T17:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=15017"},"modified":"2021-02-23T19:21:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T19:21:14","slug":"glasgow-students-call-for-a-rent-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2020\/09\/26\/glasgow-students-call-for-a-rent-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"Glasgow Students Call For A Rent Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Inglis of the Republican Socialist Platform has written the following article on the proposed Glasgow University Students’ Rent Strike (also see Glasgow Uni Rent Strike<\/a>)<\/h2>\n

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The big news of the last few days has concerned the outbreaks of COVID-19 in student halls at Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. With an explosion of positive cases, especially at Glasgow University, hundreds of students in halls have been placed into quarantine[1], and every single student in Scotland has now been banned from going to pubs and cafes for the weekend beginning the 25th<\/sup> September[2]. But beyond the predictable impulse to blame this all on wild student flat parties over Freshers\u2019 Week, there are important questions that must be asked about the decision on the part of university managements across the country to open up halls again for the new academic year. How could it be a good idea, amid a pandemic, to encourage students to move into halls of residence, where multiple people share the same kitchen and bathroom spaces, when all courses are online? The result has been a public health disaster, and it has certainly contributed to the ongoing, country-wide collapse into a second lockdown. Furthermore, from the interviews with students being run by BBC News, it appears that students were often unaware that all their classes would be online prior to moving in.<\/p>\n

One article records the dissatisfaction felt by halls students on finding out that everything is online after they had already moved in and started paying rent. \u201cWe students are caught up in the fact that no one wants to take responsibility for what’s going on and we are the ones caught up in it and we don’t know if it’s worth the money we are paying.\u201d said one student, and the mother of another student spoke about how her daughter \u201cfound out that all classes will be online for the first semester\u201d after moving in. She lamented the fact that her daughter \u201csigned an agreement and paid a lot of money to stay there and what for? Now she is essentially imprisoned?\u201d.[3] In another BBC News article, one first year student in Glasgow\u2019s Murano Street Halls questioned why \u201cthe university told them to move into the halls when they could have followed their online courses from home.\u201d[4] The feelings that permeate these interviews are feelings of betrayal and frustration, of having been ripped-off. How could it be otherwise, when students in halls have been sold an unsafe living experience, one which they are now trapped in, all so the universities can collect their rent? With the university experience being entirely online, there was no reason for the halls to be opened back up, other than rent money.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, the anger of the students appears to be swiftly bearing fruit. Already on the night of the 24th\u00a0<\/sup>September a Twitter account for a group called \u201cGlasgow Uni Rent Strike\u201d had been set up, calling, as the name suggests, for students in halls to withhold rent payments \u201cuntil the University work out a method to reimburse us for any negligence.\u201d[5] There is also motion at Aberdeen, where the Student Tenants Union has announced that it will be forming a committee on Monday the 28th<\/sup> September.[6] It is clear that the student tenants\u2019 organisation, pioneered in the last year by the Stirling Students Tenants Union[7], is an idea whose time has come. We are very excited to see tenants\u2019 unions emerging at universities all over Scotland, and we hope to see plenty of co-ordination and co-operation between them in the days and weeks to come. We want to make clear our complete support for any and all rent strikes called by students – The quick, sneaky greed of university landlordism has potentially landed us with hundreds of new COVID-19 cases, and, if uni managements get away with lumping all the blame on students, their negligence will go unacknowledged and unaccounted for. The stakes are high and the need is urgent- The rent strike is the way forward.<\/p>\n

There is, after all, only one way to make a landlord cave: Hit \u2018em in the wallet!<\/p>\n

[1] Libby Brooks, Major Covid Outbreak at Glasgow University sees 600 self-isolate<\/em> (2020)<\/a> [accessed 25 September 2020].<\/p>\n

[2] Ciaran Jenkins (@C4Ciaran, 25 September 2020) \u2018Nicola Sturgeon confirms the no pub\/cafe rule applies to ALL quarter of a million students in Scotland this weekend and that yes she does support disciplinary measures (I asked about expulsion) as a last resort.\u2019 <\/a>\u00a0 [accessed 25 September 2020].<\/p>\n

[3] BBC News, Covid-hit university students: ‘Why have they sent us here?’<\/em>(2020)<\/a> [accessed 25 September 2020].<\/p>\n

[4] Covid: Scottish university students told not to go to pubs<\/em>\u00a0(2020)<\/a> [accessed 25 September 2020].<\/p>\n

[5] Glasgow Uni Rent Strike (@UofGRentStrike, 24 September 2020)<\/a> [accessed 25 September 2020]<\/p>\n

[6] Aberdeen Student Tenants Union (@AberdeenTenant, 25 September 2020) \u2018Following today\u2019s announcement, Aberdeen Student Tenant\u2019s Union will be meeting on Monday at 3pm on Zoom in order to formally create a committee. Now more than ever, we need to stop our universities, private providers and landlords from ripping off student renters\u2019<\/a> [accessed 25 September 2020]<\/p>\n

[7] Stirling Students Tenants Union (@Stirling Tenant)<\/a> [accessed 25 September 2020]
\n__________
\nalso see:- EVICTIONS OF MIGRANTS IN DUBLIN DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Inglis of the Republican Socialist Platform has written the following article on the proposed Glasgow University Students’ Rent Strike (also see Glasgow Uni Rent Strike) The big news of the last few days has concerned the outbreaks of COVID-19 in student halls at Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. With an explosion of positive cases,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1858,1860,18,1875],"tags":[8098],"class_list":["post-15017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oppression-liberation","category-other-social-struggles","category-political-campaigns","category-scotland-against-unionism","tag-author-paul-inglis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":1567,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15017"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17825,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15017\/revisions\/17825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}