Why I’m calling for Rex Knight’s resignation

‘Let’s call it a Knight’


Picture this: it UCL Open Day 2015, a world-renowned university pitching its brand at prospective students. It’s London’s Global University after all, the meshing of neoclassical and postmodern architecture that embodies its rightfully cosmopolitan image.

Queues are formed where prospective students from Lincolnshire to Lagos line up to look at brochures telling them just how employable they will be with a UCL BA in History with a European Language or a BSc in Mechanical Engineering.

But the polite hubbub is immediately drowned out by the cacophony of students wielding oversized cardboard book sleeves as legionary shields, pissed off and worn out teaching assistants, environmentalists, communists, living wage campaigners, flares and drums. But they’re not there as “troublemakers”; despite their love for the university (or because of it), and the community and life that it represents, they voice their concerns only to be ignored or outright targeted with eviction.

While protests and occupations have come and gone at UCL, it was that particular demonstration that tarnished the careful, tranquil veneer that upper management had successfully maintained until that point, and proved that they were no longer in control of the flow of public discourse.

Their loyalties to their university and the faculties that educate and support them are not in question, instead it’s for Rex Knight. I have now come to the conclusion that Knight’s history as Vice Provost of Operations is an unmitigated disaster, for students, staff, and UCL’s reputation on the global stage. In short, I am pleading for the student body and staff faculties to politely ask for Rex Knight’s immediate resignation.

Since Summer 2015, UCL management have seen several rent strikes, one of which resulted in a heavy payout in compensation at the end of last year, and an SU that is committed to challenging UCL on its extortionate rent sets. These are the same price setting policies that cohort Andrew Grainger is recorded as declaring: “We do not set out rents on the basis of the least well-off students… Some people just simply cannot afford to study in London and that is just a fact of life.”

But Rex Knight has a history of throwing a tantrum when things don’t go his way. So let’s have an ancient history lesson. In the 2011/12 academic year, after widespread anger to cuts and restructuring of the uni, our previous Provost cum ersatz Burt Reynolds gimmick, Malcolm Grant was faced with the threat of no-confidence by the UCLU general assembly.

Naturally our PR mastermind intervened with a condescending remark of “respecting” the body’s democratic voice, while allegedly threatening to cut funding to the union. On top of that, since 2014, UCL has failed to come fully clean on ensuring that its outsourced workers for the UCL Qatar project are adequately protected and compensated, a project that VP of Operations Rex Knight is partly overseeing.

History repeated itself three years later, when after more than 150 students declared that they were withdrawing their rent at Hawkridge House (a wire enmeshed construction site), the entire block was awarded £300,000 collectively. This was after UCL’s own regulatory body found that the conditions at Hawkridge were flaunting the national Accommodation Code. Now approximately 500 students have declared that they are withholding their rent from halls management, and they aren’t situated in one single hall either. This is going well, isn’t it?

Then let’s look at the media fallout, like how the rents don’t factor in less well-off students, I don’t think the individual who thought that “there is no such thing as bad publicity” considered these two. At least two, reputable newspapers (and, of course, The Tab) have turned the spotlight on Rex Knight for his alleged threats of expulsion against Rebecca Pinnington, President of Pi Media.

So pardon the long sentence here, but: Someone unintentionally leaks confidential documents through a 100 per cent secure email system from your own department, it’s then picked up by none other than the President of a student news magazine, who happens to be personally dead-set on becoming a principled career journalist (on the bright side, your cock-ups helped with her CV), you then ominously summon her to a room where she swears she was coerced in to signing a cease and desist form which threatened her expulsion, which is then picked up by the National Union of Journalists who happen to be comprised of, well, journalists of various national and internationally read outlets.

Just what did you think was going to happen?

And now it’s only escalating further. Last month, Rex was the inspiration for a burning effigy of  in a public spectacle that echoed the spirit of bonfires outside the Bastille, with chants of, “Evict management!” Days before that, protesters stormed on to the Portico’s summit proclaiming solidarity to the rent strikers and thanks to their successes, you’re also indirectly responsible for inspiring a rent strike at Goldsmiths.

The debate has also shifted on campus; for every person directly tied to Cut The Rent, there are many more who endorse their aims.

How long is this going to last? The media spotlight is on Mr Knight’s department, plagued with allegations of incompetence and bullying, and students have turned to striking as a fundamental last resort after a complete breakdown in negotiations. It’s become a never-ending circus. How many will promise to rent strike next year? A thousand? Two thousand the year after that? UCL have apparently lost £250,000 in rents this term and much more is set to be lost from late April onwards. It’s getting expensive isn’t it? Perhaps tiring?

Don’t you think that maybe we should call it a Knight, Rex?