Covid-19 is an enormous challenge for UK universities, but so too are the demands for equality and justice which have emerged out of the recent Black Lives Matter protests. Now is the time for us all to come together to discuss what the university currently is, what we think it should be, and how we can implement those changes.

We support UCU’s Fund the Future campaign, which rightly demands that the government step in to defend publicly funded higher and further education. We also support the inspiring Movement for Black Lives, especially with regard to the ways in which colonialism, imperialism and racism affect the university sector.

But there are specific actions we can take here at UCL.

UCL’s response to the Covid-19 crisis has been characterised by the circumvention of academic governance structures, and a failure to address equity, workload and academic freedom concerns.

But a different approach is possible. UCL has a large operating surplus, unrestricted reserves of over £1.1 billion and cash assets of over £300 million. For comparison, its total income from tuition fees last year amounted to less than £600 million.

UCL has responded to the recent Black Lives Matter protests with some supportive emails and pledges to assess the institution's historic connections to eugenics. Whilst this is important it does not go far enough. No attempt to counter structural inequality can be meaningful whilst UCL management still refuses to bring cleaning, security and catering workers (the vast majority of whom are BAME) in-house.

The way UCL treats its outsourced staff is instructive because it shows how they would treat all staff if they could get away with it. We cannot ignore the connections between struggles going on in different parts of the university any longer: Casualisation, overworking and outsourcing are part of the same logic, and all undermine UCL’s pedagogical mission. Similarly, the recent spate of lavish building projects are motivated by excessive rents for students, but also mean that funds are diverted away from research and teaching. Most troublingly, discrimination, harrassment and oppression are a reality for students and workers all across UCL.

Now is the time to work collectively with all members of the UCL community to create a sustainable, intellectually ambitious and inclusive education system, in a workplace which is itself equitable and democratic.

Here are our demands:

Job security and dignity at work for all UCL staff

1. BAME workers at UCL, particularly those who are currently outsourced, are at greatest risk from Covid-19 and from the ensuing economic disruption. UCL must bring all workers in-house immediately and enter into negotiations with the trade unions representing those workers on the question of how best to manage that process
2. UCL must commit to no forced redundancies for the next academic year.
3. There are also profound equality issues amongst academic workers. For example, at UCL, 29% of research assistants are BAME, but only 10% of professors. UCL must commit to a full equal pay audit covering all protected characteristics to be shared with campus trade unions, and to make time-specific agreements with specific actions to close those pay gaps.
4. UCL increasingly relies on casualised academic workers to deliver teaching. UCL must adopt the UCU framework to end casualisation.
5. The transition to online teaching has created huge additional workloads; first time delivery of online courses will be a similar challenge. UCL must provide explicit additional FTE for online teaching, reduce publication and research grant expectations, reduce administrative burdens, and work with UCU to address concerns around intellectual property rights over our teaching materials.
6. No worker should be forced to work in unsafe situations, either on- or off-campus. UCL must commit to ensuring that all currently outsourced workers are covered by UCL’s health and safety framework, and that those working from home are supplied with all the equipment required by the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations

A properly democratic governance structure

1. Covid-19 has been used by UCL's senior management to institute a new, impromptu "Command Structure", which has undermined accountability, removed opportunities for scrutiny and goes against the letter and spirit of UCL's Charter and Statutes. UCL must reinstate normal governance procedures immediately and implement in full the recommendations of the recent Commission of Inquiry report into good governance.

Respect and support for all students

1. UCL largely recruits students from a fairly narrow cross-section of society and, once at the university, there seem to be significant attainment gaps. UCL must make all the relevant data publicly accessible so that we can ascertain the scale of these two problems.
2. UCL must commit to funding a more progressive Widening Participation programme (including scholarships and bursaries), and to involving current students in its design and implementation.
3. UCL’s Liberating the Curriculum working group must be given the power and resources necessary for such an undertaking. This group should also be structured and constituted to ensure that it is a space for dialogue between students and academics, not a tool for managerial oversight.
4. UCL must reinstate the rent guarantor scheme for students, or enter into serious negotiations with students to find a workable replacement.
5. UCL must not use Covid-19 as an excuse to cut smaller courses and diminish the variety of learning on offer to students.

A Collective Vision for UCL is a grassroots campaign organised by students, workers and academics of all grades across the university.