This week marks yet another failure for students at Cardiff University. 
 
As thousands of final year students are receiving their transcripts, the culmination of years of hard work, many will receive pieces of paper littered with ‘missing marks’ from assessments and modules not yet assessed. This is on top of students having lost teaching, contact hours, supervision, and academic support due to strike action across the year. This will have severe consequence on employability, access to further study, and access to funding programmes for research, among other areas of our graduating students’ lives. 
 
This crisis has been growing for many months and should not have taken the university by surprise. Cardiff University has made the choice to intimidate and manipulate through the use of 50% pay deductions to staff for the entirety of the Marking and Assessment Boycott – one of the harshest penalties in the sector. This is a decision designed to break and invalidate the efforts of staff in the fight for better pay and conditions, and disproportionately impacts members of our Union and especially our Postgraduate Students who teach.  
 
We all came to university to learn, grow as people, and become part of a community much greater than ourselves. Students recognise that the strike action is not only a fight for better pay and pensions, but is also one against pay inequality, precarious work, and excessive workloads. A fight which will not only benefit postgraduate students who teach but all students whose learning conditions are staffs’ working conditions. Students support has continued to be loud and clear and was solidified in Cardiff students’ overwhelming vote in favour of supporting UCU strike action at the Students’ Union Annual General Meeting in December 2022.  
 
Cardiff University has the power to call for an end to this dispute by publicly supporting the reopening of negotiations between UCU and UCEA. By standing back and doing nothing, Cardiff University is failing students who are finishing with provisional/no degrees despite having worked so hard throughout this unprecedented period of COVID-19 and prolonged industrial action.

We call on the Vice Chancellor of Cardiff University to: 

• Reimburse the fees of all students who have been impacted by the industrial action, 
• Immediately retract these threats and meaningfully engage with Cardiff UCU branch to find a resolution,
• To do everything within your power to support negotiations, ensure UCEA remain at the table, and make a fair offer to UCU. 

Together we can end this dispute for good. 

The Sabbatical Officer Team of 2023/24   

• Angie Flores Acuña, Students’ Union President    
• Madison Hutchinson, Vice President Societies & Volunteering 
  (Received a transcript with “missing marks”) 
• Georgia Spry, Vice President Sports and Athletic Union President 
  (Transcript delayed) 
• Noah Russell Vice President Undergraduate Students (Education & Welfare)    
• Micaela Panes Vice President Postgraduate Students (Education & Welfare)    
• Alex Meers Vice President Heath Park Campus (Education & Welfare)    
• Deio Owen Is-Lywydd Iaith, Cymuned a Diwylliant Cymru