Students send angry letter to VC Patrick Johnston on student poverty

By Kylie Noble, editor, @Noble_Kylie

QUB Student Poverty Alliance Group (SPAG) has sent a strongly worded letter to Vice-Chancellor Patrick Johnston on issues of student poverty.

SPAG includes several candidates running for election this week; Sean Fearon for VP Campaigns & Communications, Paul Loughran for VP Community, Oisin Hasson for VP Equality & Diversity and Chloe Patterson for VP Community.

A post on their Facebook page earlier today encourages students to vote for these candidates describing them as “committed activists and committed socialists.”

The letter SPAG state they emailed to VC Patrick Johnston today calls on him to publicly commit to addressing issues of student poverty and that they “feel that you are paid exorbitantly to manage the University at an executive level.”

Sean Fearon has previously met with VC Johnston on issues of student poverty.

SPAG state:

“Today we sent a letter to the Vice-Chancellor. His blatant negligence of the growing poverty amongst students is simply reprehensible.

SPAG will take a stand and we will do our best to ensure that the University and the Vice-Chancellor wake up and start taking action to resolve this issue.

If he does not publicly acknowledge that action must be taken by March 13th, then SPAG will continue to take every step possible to ensure pressure is put on the VC to alleviate this issue.”

The full letter is below.