College put students last at Harlington

I have to say that it is my view that this communication should be going to the Rector of the College and in my day as a student we would have had the right to take a letter straight to his door. However of course in my day I could have raised this matter to the rector either in my weekly meetings with him, by picking up the telephone orby raising it at the Governing Body or Finance and Executive committees. However it seems that in today’s world even the alumni have to take a back seat in regard to communications with college officials and hence I am forced to write to you.

You will probably have grasped that this is not a letter of commendation to the college but a letter of complaint and I would like a formal response and explanation.

Two weeks back I attended my regular alumni event at the college by participating in the president’s match day celebration where alumni and students meet and come face to face across the playing fields at Harlington and battle out for supremacy. I have been participating in this particular event since 1984 when as a fresher I was selected as the university centre half and had the privilege of playing against some ex-students who promptly taught me a thing or two about hockey.

What I and others learned about team work, fair play, strategy and determination on the playing fields at Harlington during our time at IC should not be under-estimated. Frankly I believe that it was far more important training for my time in industry than what was given to me in the lecture theatres and labs at the South Kensington site - 99% of which I would never use again.

Over recent years I had noticed a rising presence of commercial influence at the Sports ground during these events, but this year was frankly unbelievable. On arriving at the gate to the ground an officious man in a security uniform met me and told my family and me that we had to park our cars in a space a great distance from the pitch next to a set of bins. I was told that I could not park where I had parked every year for the last 30 years over-viewing the pitch - so that in the event of rain my family could retire to the car and still be able to see their old dad give the young lads of the uni an education in the art of hockey, because that space was reserved for “the first team”. Indeed there was a barrier across more than half of the car park which was manned by another officious man in a security hut and beyond this barrier was a set of ostentatious cars belonging, as it turned out, to players from some half-baked football club, none of which have probably got a set of A’ levels let along been enrolled on a course at our treasured college in central London. I asked Mick Reynolds, the out going groundsman - whose first year in charge was the same year that I entered as a fresher at college - what was going on and he expressed dismay, explaining that alumni and students were not allowed in the vast majority of the clubhouse because the college had let it out to this football club! What was more my 10 year old son was thrown off one of the football pitches where he had wanted to kick his football in one of the very many unused goals because supposedly it belonged to the reserve squad.

Let me get something straight here - I was appalled to see that my college had sold out to profit, and that today alumni and students came last in the order of priority for use of college facilities. What is going on? Have you all gone completely insane? You are a university - you are meant to educate the young men and women of this country and in the process, make Britain great. You are not meant to be selling out to the highest bidder and squeezing students into a corner by a set of bins. Students are the entire raison d’etre of the college and aside from matters of security there should be no place that they should not be allowed to go.

This is particularly the case with Harlington and the Boat House in Putney. It seems the College has conveniently forgotten where these facilities came from and who paid the price for them. Just to remind you - if you read the governing body minutes datingback to the period just after World War I - as I have done - and trace the history forward to today you will learn that Harlington and the Boat House in Putney were bought with the proceeds of sale of the War Memorial Ground in Wembly North London. That in turn the War Memorial Ground was bought with funds raised by a trust established to commemorate the fallen in WWI a trust called the War Memorial Fund. These grounds were bought with the blood of fallen students in World War I and through the charitable giving of other students and their families at that time who all expected the money they were giving to go for the good of students. To instead put students at the bottom of the line of priority is a gross breach of trust and makes me feel sick in my stomach. When I was president of the ICU in 1987 the then Chairman of the Governing Body a High Court Judge recognised the importance of the heritage of these sporting assets and forced the college to return them to trust for the good of the students. It now seems that his ruling has been completely disregarded by current college administration and not only do I and my children have to be marginalized by someone who does not even work for the college on the one day that I wish to show off the wonders of my student heritage to my family but it appears that the students have to play second fiddle the entire year around.

I would like to understand for the sake of the fallen students from World War I and their memory, exactly how much money is being made from the letting of these student facilities to outside bodies and how the college justified the detriment suffered by the student body as worth the benefit of the money raise, and I would further like to see how this money is being spent to the benefit of students and in particular student sporting activities. Please note that I will not be swayed by any use of this money that in my view is being used to reduce the grant that central college has been obliged to pay to support student sport and other recreational activities since the establishment of the college back at the turn of the last century. I expect to be able to see some demonstrable improvement in benefits to the students that has arisen out of the letting of these facilities which might make it worthwhile my family being stuck by a set of bins and us all (students, alumni and their families) being treated like third class citizens.

Ian Howgate

Imperial College Union President 1987-88