Around one-third of the money saved by withholding striking staff's wages will be distributed to final year students who had numerous modules affected by the industrial action. These will be ranging from £100 to £200 dependant on the number of modules affected.
Explaining the reasoning for this, the email describes how how "final year students will not be in a position to benefit from many of the projects that will be supported [by the strike funds] in the coming months, and cannot benefit from subsidised gown-hire at congregation ceremonies, which was provided to graduates in 2018 [due to the virus]".
The University has furthermore stated a variety of other projects and schemes that will benefit from the other two-thirds of strike savings. These have been shaped by discussion with the Students' Union, and are focused on student hardship, wellbeing and other projects for the benefit of all students. These include putting money towards additional student hardship funds, including funding for IT hardware and software, an enhancement of front-line wellbeing services, and support for projects that address hate crime.
14 days of strike action was held across February and March. Prior to this, eight days of strikes in November, accompanied by a period of action short of a strike, was estimated to have affected around one million students at 60 universities across the UK.
Featured image: Magnus Hagdorn on Flickr
It's a bit of a kick in the teeth, as a final year student who was affected by the strikes but not in more than an arbitrary three modules to not get any compensation for all of this. If this was 2018 and I wasn't affected by them but was in final year, I'd have got the 50% off in the cafes and free gowns, but I get nothing for it this year.
Surely, every if compensation is being given out to final year students, every final year student should get it, no matter how badly they were affected? Because we'd be benefiting from the other provisions if we weren't final year, even if we weren't affected by the strikes.