Hi everyone,

As you will have been informed by now by the university, Action Short of a Strike (ASOS) has begun as of the 28th of October. This has come out of the dispute raised by Exeter UCU, the branch of the main trade union that represents academics at the university, following the voluntary redundancies that took place over the summer.

The main thing for you know is that your studies and research should carry on as normal. Your lecturers will still continue their normal duties of delivering scheduled teaching, office hours, assessments, supervision and research support.

As a result, you shouldn’t feel the need to do anything differently, so please carry on attending your lectures and seminars, completing assessments and reaching out to your lecturers and reps for support and feedback. 

ASOS means that some staff members may not take on additional tasks or workload, particularly if these are voluntary commitments. This is not full strike action and conversations are ongoing across the university, UCU and the SU about ways in which we can best protect your student experience.

If you have any questions about ASOS or more broadly about industrial action, the university has created an FAQs page that you can access here: FAQs. If there’s a question you have that hasn’t been answered by these, please reach out to the university through this email: industrialaction@exeter.ac.uk . You can also use this email to share any feedback about your experience during this period, as well as contacting your academic reps directly as normal. 

If you’d like any further support, here’s the link for university wellbeing: Exeter Wellbeing - Cornwall . The SU can also provide free, confidential and impartial advice through our advice team, which you can access here: SU Advice

Thanks for taking the time to read this email and please give me and the SU a shout if there any additional things we can support you with.