Oxford Brookes students that face a delayed graduation have written to their Vice-Chancellor objecting to the poor treatment of their lecturers.

 

To Professor Fitt and the members of the Oxford Brookes VCG, This letter marks an escalation in our communications with you. It is apparently a necessary escalation, as, so far, your responses have been masterclasses in avoiding the question. Given that, we have decided to restate our concerns in a more public forum.

We as Oxford Brookes students are currently being faced with the reality that a marking boycott will delay our final grades. Those of us who are in third year are facing delayed graduation, which of course has detrimental effects on our post-university plans, including scholarship and post graduate applications. Your communications to us thus far have implied that we should direct our ire about this state of affairs towards the lecturers. We disagree. You all have the ability to help ameliorate the conditions that have forced our lecturers to strike, and you have chosen not to. If our grades and graduations are delayed, the blame falls squarely at the feet of you and your colleagues around the country.

Read also: Oxford Brookes students face delayed graduation following strikes

You have so far failed to address our concerns in any meaningful way. Hopefully a restatement of them in a more public forum will produce a different result.

Our Concerns:

  • Associate lecturers are having difficulty paying basic bills. Some have been forced to rely on food banks to make ends meet. Meanwhile, you are all making either six figures or very nearly six figures. Given that the lecturers are the entire reason you have been able to pay yourselves those salaries (we certainly don’t pay tuition for the quality of administration), we consider this state of affairs to have strayed beyond unfair and into the grotesque.
  • Lecturers’ workloads are completely absurd, and they are not actually being paid for a large percentage of the hours they work. That this is intentional is blatantly obvious from two facts: first that the hours set out in the Oxford Brookes Workload Plan are hilariously inadequate, even to those of us with no experience teaching, and second that when lecturers began taking ASOS (Action Short Of Strike) and refusing to do the extra unpaid work they had been doing, they were threatened with a 100 per cent pay dock, which was only taken off the table due to student pressure.
  • The VCG has elected to put a large percentage of teaching and research staff on precarious casual fixed term contracts. The effects of this have been detailed in the UCU’s report on casualisation in Oxford. It is a very upsetting read: on the higher end of the pay scale, lecturers have been unable to start families or get mortgages because of how unstable these contracts are, and on the lower end of the pay scale, lecturers have had to rely on food banks and charity to make ends meet. On these contracts, many lecturers only find out that they will still have jobs at the university two weeks before term starts.
  • There are absurd pay gaps between your cis, straight, abled, white employees, many of whom aren’t paid fairly as it is, and the teaching and research staff who fall outside of any of these privileged categories. While the pay spine ranges are set at a national level, the precise salaries of individual lecturers are determined at a university level. We can only conclude that you have chosen to ensure that those pay gaps continue to exist.

This is a set of behaviours that we as students find completely and utterly unacceptable, particularly given that a large number of you are professors yourselves. It is difficult to conclude anything other than that once you reached your comfortable highly paid positions, you decided to pull the ladder up after you. This will not be allowed to stand.

Our requirements:

  • A commitment to fair pay and an end to unpaid hours. This is the absolute least you can do.
  • A commitment to fixing the issue of pay gaps. This is something directly in your control that can be remedied relatively quickly. Levelling everyone down is not an acceptable solution.
  • A commitment to negotiate fair, specific, and stable contracts with teaching and research staff, to prevent the horrendous conditions outlined in the casualisation report mentioned previously.
  • A commitment to do everything within your power to advocate for Oxford Brookes lecturers to your colleagues at the national level.

On that last point, you all (but particularly Professor Fitt) occupy and move in spaces and circles denied to most of us. You all have more influence than we can wield at a national level. Thus far, you have not used it productively. In our view, you have a responsibility, partly inherent in your positions and partly because of the massive amount of goodwill that has been extended to you over the years by lecturers, to advocate on their behalf. If we as students are capable of organising and registering our concerns with you, you absolutely have the ability to advocate on behalf of lecturers to your colleagues. We expect you to use it.

Regards, Oxford Brookes Students

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok

Got a story for us? Send us your news and pictures here

List an event for free on our website here