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Student activists are preparing for the biggest wave of university rent strikes in four decades amid growing frustration at heavy-handed hall lockdowns, the prospect of paying for empty rooms and little face-to-face teaching when they eventually return in the new year.

There are at least 20 rent strikes currently under way or being organised on campuses, with activists at both Oxford and Sussex universities this week signing up hundreds of students ahead of the new term. Other institutions also preparing action include Goldsmiths, University of London, and Edinburgh and Cambridge universities.

Matthew Lee from Rent Strike, a grassroots group that is coordinating many of the campaigns, said students were fed up with being treated as cash cows for universities, especially in the midst of a pandemic when in-person teaching and campus life was so limited. “This is the biggest wave of student renter militancy in over 40 years,” said Lee. “The last time there was resistance on this scale was in the mid-1970s.”

Activists across the country are hoping to emulate a successful mass rent strike at Manchester University, which last month led it to cut rent in its halls by 30% for this term. However, the first-year students, who organised the campaign, are determined to join other universities to force rent cuts for the rest of the academic year.

The number of students pledging to withhold rent has tripled, with almost 600 ready to strike in January.

“We are going to keep withholding our rent,” said Ben McGowan, one of the Manchester organisers, who hasn’t had any real face-to-face teaching yet. “And we are helping other universities set up their own strikes because every student in the country deserves a rent cut.”

The movement in the city has been growing since hundreds of hall residents tore down fences erected to prevent them moving freely around the campus last month, intended, according to the university, as means to stop the spread of the virus.

McGowan said students are expecting rent cuts to cover the government’s staggered return, which will see students on non-practical courses come back across a five-week period. “Students should not be paying for halls when they are not there,” he said.

Nearly 200 students have pledged to withhold their rent in Sussex. “In 24 hours, we got 198 names,” said Ellie Concannon from Sussex Renters Union. “Students are getting desperate because money is going to very tight over the Christmas period.”

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