We appreciate both students' support for staff, and how greatly students' studies were impacted during the strike period. The SU stance has been to both facilitate solidarity between students and staff, and represent the students who are concerned about their loss of teaching. You can find previous news articles on the strike here.

photo credit: Myro Wulff

Student letter to the Vice Chancellor 

Thank you to everyone who signed the open letter to the Vice Chancellor. At the time of writing this 582 signatures were gained. We have sent the letter and your comments to the Vice Chancellor asking him how he plans to make improvements within our institution. You can read and sign the letter here if you haven’t already.

Rep meetings with the Vice Chancellor 

The Students’ Union met with the Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor on the 12th of March on one of the final days of the strike to discuss the need for the VCO to engage in open dialogue with the students. The VC and the DVC agreed to start attending School Assemblies, as well as doing monthly drop-in sessions in all RCA Campuses (these would normally be held in the Canteen or cafe areas, but we are exploring how to make them work digitally at the moment). 

We then organised school assemblies (Design, Architecture, Communication, Arts & Humanities) with the Vice Chancellor Office and student reps. Minutes of these assemblies have been sent to reps, who share them with their courses. The Vice Chancellor Office has additionally agreed to meet with student reps again in the third term. Please keep your reps informed of anything you would like to raise! 

Financial compensation for students 

We have been in dialogue with the College about how students seeking financial compensation for lost teaching during the strike period can ask for it. The College has put together a specific strike complaint form, which is available here.

We recommend making complaints in course groups so you can detail how your particular course teaching was affected. 

OIA have put together case studies of successful and non successful claims for compensation which you can have a read through here.