Cambridge students outraged as cleaners share photos of untidy rooms

Students at the University of Cambridge are in uproar after photos of their bedrooms and kitchens were sent by housekeepers to everyone in their college without permission.

Fitzwilliam College, home to about 750 undergraduates and postgraduates, sent an email on April 17 containing images of students’ untidy bedrooms and kitchens that had been taken without their consent by housekeepers, prompting concerns around privacy.

The message said the photos were included in the email as “an illustration of what housekeeping DO NOT want to see on their weekly visits,” Varsity, the university’s student newspaper, reported.

The email was swiftly removed from inboxes and the college server after the affected students and the junior combination room (JCR), the group of students representing undergraduates at the college, raised complaints and concerns about privacy. The college has since apologised to its students.

One of the students involved told Varsity that the email was “a massive invasion of privacy”, adding that it was “deeply embarrassing” as “everyone knew it was my kitchen, so I was near enough named and shamed to the entire college”.

The Fitzwilliam College JCR co-president, Aaron Lardi, also told the newspaper that the actions of the college were “unacceptable” and that the JCR would take measures to “ensure that this does not happen again”.

Students also reported incidents of housekeepers at the college waking them at 7am by “screaming at us to put plates away” and that some had complained that their room was infested with slugs, Varsity reported. The JCR said that this practice had been raised with the college and would not happen again as “students didn’t like it”.

A spokesman for Fitzwilliam College said: “On Wednesday, an email was sent by a member of staff to all students setting out cleaning expectations for those living in college accommodation. The inclusion of the image of a student room was unacceptable and the college has issued an apology to the student and recalled the email. Steps have been taken with immediate effect to ensure that this does not happen again.

“Historically, when spaces were so untidy that cleaning could not be carried out, housekeepers used to knock on students’ doors, to offer them the opportunity to move items, so that they did not miss out on the weekly clean. This was always after 8am, usually later, and was meant to be of benefit to the students. In response to recent feedback from the JCR, this practice has stopped.”

It follows last August when postgraduate students at Christ’s College, Cambridge, were left outraged when the college unexpectedly announced there was no accommodation available for many of them. Due to the marking and assessment boycott being held, many students who had completed an undergraduate degree were not awarded a final grade.

The college offered accommodation to students returning for masters courses only after they met their offer, which many students without grades were unable to do. This resulted in the college already allocating rooms, leaving many without accommodation and scrambling to find expensive private accommodation elsewhere.

Varsity reported that the college did not inform the affected students until August 9, two days after all the rooms had been filled. One student told Varsity that “this whole episode just could not have been handled any worse by the college” and that they “would have chosen another college if I knew this was going to happen,” while another added the college had “done nothing to alleviate the stress for [the] student body of 2023 — students who had also endured the chaos of the 2020 A-Level fiasco”.