Being a third year student is naturally a stressful time - contemplating your next steps, going to job interviews, writing your dissertation and working hard to achieve the best grades possible. However, for the 2019-2020 academic third years, we feel this has been particularly challenging beyond belief.

Following two episodes of UCU strike action - for which we support our academics - we have missed a total of 6 weeks of academic teaching. For third years, who were due to finish teaching at the end of March, this is a significant amount of time. Followed by the coronavirus outbreak, we have now missed our final weeks on campus. Friends we will never see again, lecturers we will never get to say goodbye to in person. 

Most importantly, we have today heard (19th March 2020) that our summer graduation ceremony will not be going ahead. This is completely heartbreaking that all our hard work will not be rewarded and we will not see friends a final time.

We are asking the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Brighton to allow sensible measures to be applied to grades that will, through no fault of our own, be impacted and have graduation in winter 2020.