Dear Professor Sir Richard Trainor, Professor Karen O'Brien and Mr Ian Creagh
  King’s College London,   On behalf of the student cohort of King's College London, we hereby put forward this petition in relation to the recent UCU teachers’ strike for your review and consideration.   This petition addresses a level of dissatisfaction that we students at King’s College London are experiencing in the face of strike actions that are interrupting teaching hours. At the outset it must be emphasised that we support our lecturers’ participation in union strikes. Concerns about pay freezes in the face of increased living costs (especially in the capital) are not only understandable but are encouraged by many of us. Those of us who see our future in academia particularly appreciate that these current actions may safeguard our future. Furthermore, as a diverse student-body we recognise that making academic work economically unsustainable only discourages inclusion –typically of those from lower economic groups, ethnic and racial minorities, women and disabled people, all of whom have been disproportionately affected by recent austerity measures.   The rising student fees for both Home/EU and International students and the inverse relationship this income has with Teachers' Pay, make us question the tussle the employers and the Teachers are engaged in, and why no attempt is being made by the Management to represent student interest in this deadlock. To put it bluntly, the University has ignored us. We received communication explaining when the strikes will disrupt our teaching hours (and one last e-mail informing us of disruptions due to the tube strikes and the teacher strikes), but no attempt has been made by the College to communicate with us about how the management is dealing with the actions. This implies that the loss of teaching hours for students is seen as ‘collateral damage’. The authorities have hardly made any attempt to engage us in the debate and help us understand why and how are we being affected.   Although the impact of the strikes on student timetables varies depending on department and whether they are undergraduate or postgraduate, the reluctance of University management to resolve the disputes quickly is having an irreparable impact on student education. For a Humanities student the on-going strikes have cost an average of 4-8 hours of lost contact time, which works out to 5-7% of the total contact time of 120 hours. While fully supporting our lecturers’ motivations in striking, we feel that diminishing our teaching hours has caused us to be unfairly affected. In light of this, we expect College higher management to respond to our following demands:  

1. We demand that the College represents our interests as students and puts pressure on the University and College Employers Association (UCEA) to negotiate a fair pay offer and bring this pay dispute to an immediate resolve. Additionally, the College should be transparent and communicative about the actions they are taking to do this.
 
2. Staff have had their wages deducted when participating in the strikes. As a matter of principle we believe the College should not profit from their failure to give our staff fair pay, and as fee payers we call on the management to redirect all docked wages to a student hardship fund.
 
3. We insist that the College makes a public statement talking about the need to invest in education and the best Academic and Support staff and call on other universities and colleges management teams to try to bring this dispute to a resolve.

    By highlighting these three key action points, we are inviting higher KCL management to address our concerns. Since we have received little to no communication from staff outside of our department we assume that student satisfaction and success with their education is not of interest to higher managers. This is deeply worrying to us, as we have observed the (in our view) neglectful treatment that the academic staff has received.    We hope this petition gains attention from KCL higher management and supports our lecturers’ actions to gain a living standard wage. Furthermore we hope that our experiences in this turbulent time are recognised and the College takes measures to ensure it does not fail its students. Finally we hope that an internationally renowned educational institution of the calibre of King’s College London shows that it is as accountable to its key stakeholders, including students and teachers, as its remit of being a social institution implies.   Thank you.   On behalf of the students at King's College London