Will you join us in demanding that Colin Bailey and the rest of the Queen Mary's UoL leadership  stop the cruel covid evictions and meet with students now?

QMUL is evicting students at a far higher rate than any other university in the country. They are using minor rule breaches such as tampering with fire alarms to target students on rent strike. Since September, 20 students have been evicted from halls. This has made many of them homeless and the university has failed to provide them with sufficient support since.

From 2017-2019, 111 students were evicted. To compare, our London counterparts such as UCL and KCL evicted 0 or less than 5 students in this same time period. QMUL Rent Strike believes that the university is compensating for it’s own poor fire safety standards which they have failed to uphold (such as the presence of timber cladding on residential buildings going unchecked) by evicting students who break minor fire safety rules.

We need QMUL to:

• HALT ALL EVICTIONS CURRENTLY TAKING PLACE

• REHOUSE ALL EVICTED STUDENTS, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

• ADOPT EVICTION MITIGATION MEASURES FOR MINOR OFFENCES WHICH ARE IN LINE WITH GOV PROTECTIONS FOR TENANTS DURING THE PANDEMIC

Example letter (feel free to edit as you like on the next page)

Dear QMUL Management Team,

I am writing to express my outrage at the cruel and punitive way you are attempting to crack down on student protest. It is cruel to evict students in the middle of a pandemic and the targeting of those who are protesting is disgraceful.

I call on you to reverse the evictions and pause those still being processed. You should be meeting with protesting students not making them homeless. I ask that you halt all evictions taking place, rehouse all evicted students, effective immediately and adopt eviction mitigation measures for minor offences, in line with the protections that all other tenants have received throughout the pandemic.

I am sure you are aware, as I am, that over 350 students at Queen Mary University of London are on rent strike. I am shocked that Queen Mary’s Management Team has not met with any strike organisers, despite this being requested. You have yet to even acknowledge the strike and the extreme conditions that have produced it and instead are punishing those brave enough to protest. I therefore ask that you to stop the cruel evictions and meet with the QMUL Rent Strike to discuss the strike and solutions to the problems these students are facing in your halls of residence.

I hope you will listen to my concerns on this extremely urgent matter,