Message delivered by Dr Price on UCT student accommodation and protests
17 February 2016
More than 75% of University of Cape Town students staying in residence are black, Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price said today as he summarised UCT’s progress in resolving the accommodation shortage that has been the focus of recent protests on campus led by the Rhodes Must Fall movement.
Dr Price said about the protests: “We have been, we believe, very supportive and tolerant of peaceful protest and we protect that always. The university is a place for discussion and debate and we jealously guard that. I think our track record of the last year of dealing with #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall protests has demonstrated that we have always been open and always made space for that. We draw the line at criminality and violence and that is what has happened last night, and that’s why we have acted firmly and strongly.”
About claims that black students have been excluded from housing on campus: “The #RhodesMustFall lobby claims that this issue is about student housing and in particular about black students not being given housing in residence in the university, and that white students have been given preference. I want to say that that is completely wrong. Firstly, if you just look at the figures: we have around 6600 beds in our residences and over 75% of them are allocated and currently occupied by black students, so the overwhelming majority is black students. Our residence admissions policy gives strong preference, very strong preference, to students on financial aid, because in general residence accommodation is a bit cheaper than [off-campus] private accommodation. Also, it gives preference to students who are very young, if they’re not yet 18, for example. And it gives preference to people who come from outside of Cape Town because clearly it’s more difficult for them.”
About the accommodation shortage at UCT this year: “As you probably know, we have only got accommodation for about a quarter of our students; we have 27000 students, [6600] beds. So we cannot accommodate them all. We assist them by trying to find them off-campus accommodation and I can tell you we have found off campus accommodation for over 2000 students in addition to the over 6000 students that are on campus [in residence]. And we have been able to find accommodation for everyone who applied for accommodation and who was offered accommodation. There are some people who did not apply and arrived [at the residence office]; or some people who applied and were told we do not have accommodation and who have not yet been accommodated; and those are the students we have in temporary accommodation while we are helping them to look for accommodation. There are about 50 students now in temporary accommodation. We are certainly hopeful and we intend to find accommodation for them too.”