 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we're joined by two activists of the Young Communist League of the United Kingdom, that's Jess and Rosie, and we're talking at a time when there's a grave crisis in the universities in the country. There's been a huge increase in the number of cases recorded by students. The latest numbers say that at least 4,000 cases have been recorded in the universities in the past few weeks alone, and this has happened after the universities have opened. Activists, especially of the left, were in the forefront demanding that a much more cautious approach be taken, a much more careful and medically sound approach be taken, and now we have this huge increase in cases. So thank you so much for joining us. So the first thing I wanted to ask was could you first talk right now about what's happening in some of the major universities, especially where a lot of cases are being recorded, we've seen universities reporting hundreds of cases, 200, 400, etc. So could you talk about what's happening on the ground right now, what are the students feeling, what's happening? From what I know is that a lot of the students who have gone into halls have basically been trapped there with people who have tested positive, which then you know will spread it to them and you're right, the numbers are up in the hundreds. I think Sheffield has recently reported 800 cases like in the last, you know, I think they've been open for two, three weeks, and yeah, it's just, you know, they've been not allowed to go out, they're not allowed to use the washing machines that are in the buildings that they're in, and they are having no financial support either from the unions or the government. Yeah, just just to go off of that point, sort of two major hot spots for the outbreaks have been Scotland and Manchester and as you say Sheffield more recently, Scotland, as they have separate government ministers, they have taken a slightly different approach, and no students have been allowed out in bars and pubs, and all I believe all of the university halls that have coronavirus outbreaks are being locked down. And those students might not even, might face the threat of not even being allowed to go home for Christmas. So quite a horrible threat. You know, say in Manchester, I know people that have got the virus from Manchester, from universities in Manchester, and it's these urban areas that the virus has been allowed to spread through government negligence. And possibly, I don't know if we're going to talk about this later, but possibly the reasoning just being towards appeasing the landlords and the student accommodation providers who want the rent from the students. Absolutely. Yeah, that is a definitely important issue we'll come to. But first of all, maybe go a bit back and talk about the reopening itself. So could you talk a bit about the context in which the universities have in classes reopened, that is physical classes reopened? What was the YCL's position then on the issue? And what were the kinds of necessary precautions taken? We'll talk a bit about that. So yes, the government was adamant that the schools and universities were going back. And it was sort of given the impression at first that, oh, it'd be online, but perhaps maybe we'd get some sort of face to face learning so that there was a reasoning why the students would want to come back to campus. But as soon as students are back on campus, it's been all online learning. From my experience, I'm not sure about Rosie's, but for most students across universities in the UK, it's been all online learning, which is the appropriate thing to do, absolutely. But did it need university students to be moving to halls for this? I'm not so sure. But yeah, certainly the approach to online learning has been a good one. It's certainly a decrease in the quality of learning that we've had in previous years. It's been face to face. It's just not the same. We're not paying for the same quality of teaching. And this needs to be recognised as well. Just to go off what Jess said there, with the online learning, obviously, is the best thing that we can have at the moment. It is brilliant. But there is so much inaccessibility with it as well. Because there are a lot of students who, you know, the university will say, well, my university has given a statement of you must have at least a computer, at least this software and this and that. And for me, it's that the people dropping out of my course and out of uni because they just can't, like, they don't have the financial ability to be able to get those materials for it. And in this context, it's interesting you raise the issue of the landlords of those who collect rent and whether there was a policy to appeasing them. So could you talk a bit about what's been happening there, especially students who are staying in accommodation, what has been the kind of safety precautions has the university intervened, have universities in general, intervened in any way with regard to that, and has there been any organising around it? So initially, we had sort of university students, even international students, actually, from, I mean, Middlesex University is a very international university. We have campuses in Dubai, in Malaysia, I believe. So we have students coming from there and they've continued to come, even Portugal. And I think the university protocol was to get them to self-isolate for two weeks. But there was no infrastructure put around these international students and their self-isolation. They didn't have the financial services, the student only hadn't come in, so they couldn't support themselves. So the self-isolation often was being broken because it was a choice between self-isolating and starving or going out and finding a job and being able to afford to eat. So yeah, that's a major issue in terms of the accommodation. And yeah, the student landlords, you know, I'm in a student house myself and they'd be quite frankly out of business if students hadn't been migrating. There's no need for us to be in these student houses in the same way that it would be in usual term times. Also, student accommodation providers, big like student halls, they're quite common over here. And they're all full again. And again, with the self-isolation issues, little support to help students needing to self-isolate. I think with the problem with the halls is that a lot of universities have said, oh, you will have some classes in smaller groups physically. So you have to come in, you have to book these hall spaces. They don't give them much option for being able to be like, no, I can't afford to just have this, you know, they have to pay a whole, you know, like 600, 700 pounds a month rent each month for like just using, you know, they'll only go into uni like once a week or once every two weeks, which is, you know, it's just completely ridiculous that they're forced to do that. Absolutely right. And also to sort of maybe take it at a larger policy level, we've seen an unprecedented crisis in education across the world. It's not only in the UK, it's across the world. And governments have responded, of course, differently in different ways, but especially in Europe and of course the UK, there's this is also coming in a time of great austerity measures. So we have seen over the years governments really cutting down funds on education. So has there been any kind of rethinking from the side of policymakers from the side of governments on this issue, or is it still the same world that's happened? Well, I think it's personally still the same because, you know, we're just not getting out of university what we pay, you know, back in, well, a few years ago, there was the increase in our tuition. And now we pay 9,250 pounds to basically just have a link to a Zoom meeting. A lot of students have been having rerecorded lectures of what they had last year. And there is just no, you know, we're not getting, for lack of better words, bang for our buck, you know, like it's just, we're not getting what we're paying for. And there has been some frustration from students, there was a petition on the petition's website that Parliament responded to, and they said, no, we can't refund you, we can't do anything about it. Yeah, there's I think, in terms of like the money side and the student loan side, the government has found themselves in quite a tricky position, because they're lending large amounts of money out, which often don't get paid back. So in the UK, just for a bit of context, if you don't pay your student loan back within 30 years, it gets wiped. And they're beginning to find that these student loans probably weren't paid back. Because if you're not earning a think below above 23 or 25,000 pounds, you don't need to start paying. So there's this sort of dichotomy. But on the other hand, universities, many universities, especially mine, which is quite a small university, survive mainly off of the student loans of the students. So they need those big student loans to be able to exist. And so the government can't stop giving out these loans and can't stop charging these large tuition fees because many of the universities would go under. And so they're in this sort of technical issue where they can't, they can't change either way. But we're not seeing any major push towards investment to do anything, any proclamations of that sort. I'm not sure in terms of the government, there is beginning to be students, students organizing and pushing for protests, but it needs to be on a much wider scale. And it needs to be a bigger fight back, in my opinion, there hasn't been enough of a challenge. It's kind of been a non issue for them, you know, they're just like, I will do this. And then that's your problem. Absolutely. Right. And just finally, in terms of the YCL itself, what are right now the key planks around which the organizing is happening? What are the kinds of demands that various branches and as a national organization, you're sort of putting across to authorities across the country? Well, I know we're going to be there's some protests happening at Barrett universities and the YCL. There was one in Scotland yesterday, they were present there. And then also, on the 26th, we'll be going to a protest as well, from my university, which is UAL. So, you know, we're kind of supporting other universities. And we've also been leafleting at universities to try and spread the word of being like, you should join the YCL for, you know, support, and we will be able to, you know, help you organize at your university to fight these injustices. Yeah. I think also, as an organization, we're trying to just push for like the basic sort of, like rights for the students to be able to come home for Christmas, to not have to go back after Christmas, if the situation is as bad. And just pushing for a safe environment of teaching, as well as obviously, the abolishing, if not the reducing of the loans, we will be hoping to organize and protest alongside students. I think we've got some plans to get involved in some protest because the response hasn't been quick enough in terms of organizing. And we need to be a force within this. And also, just to insert one more time, we've been planning on putting posters up around Uni's because obviously this is going to be a really lonely time for a lot of students because they don't have the freshest fair, they can't just go mingle with other students. So they're kind of lost for, you know, they don't really have a sense of community anymore. So we hope that the YCL can give them like this sense of belonging and being able to interact with other like-minded people as well. Absolutely. Thank you so much for Jess and Rosie for speaking to us, and we hope the struggle continues. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.