The sentence is disproportionate to the damage inflicted, to the evidence presented, and to the cause the University are trying to advance. No matter our political colours, we should all agree that this sentence must not stand.

For a start, the student was prosecuted alone. The good people at VarsiTV as well as the cumulative evidence of dozens of eyewitnesses who saw what happened can tell us he didn’t act alone, but no-one else has been disciplined.

We may severely disagree with what happened at the Willetts event (and goodness knows, I did), but Willetts was hounded out for one lecture. This student has been sent down for over two years, his academic career in tatters. The message the sentence sends is that if you protest, we will destroy your academic career. That’s not a clever or proud way for an age-old University to behave.

The Court had available to it the Spartacus letter, where over 60 fellows and students collectively testified that they were also involved and deserved similar treatment. While the Court couldn’t decide against them since they hadn’t been tried, it should have reflected that the student acted in a group when it chose to sentence him. It either did not – which is a poor consideration of the evidence – or it did, and decided to make one pay for the actions of the many. Either way, the due process and care we expect from any justice system has been sorely absent. As of writing, the Court has yet to offer either the public or the defendant a written explanation of its (mad) thought process.

The student requested that their chosen students’ union representative be permitted into the Court: for the first time in our collective memory, this simple request and fundamental right was denied – a right that is accorded to students in every other University or college procedure.

Above all, though, the Court handed down a sentence which, as far as we are aware, has no precedent in its duration. Extreme rustications or expulsions are the preserve of blatant or overwhelming plagiarism – crimes which literally make your continuation at Cambridge impossible. Protesting a government minister – however much we disagree with the divisive tactics used - does not hit that high bar. Even the University Advocate realised this, and only requested a one term suspension. The court has exercised its power in a completely arbitrary and unjust fashion: it has quite simply gone mad.

The presumed motivation for this sentence is deterrence: yet it will succeed in deterring no-one. The widespread condemnation of their peers was the most powerful deterrent against any future Willetts-style action: Cambridge students showed decisively at the end of last term that we passionately believe in freedom of speech, and will rise to defend it.

The extreme length of the sentence does nothing to defend that principle: rather it is an assault on everyone’s right to protest. With this debacle, the University has landed itself in national press attention, and faces clamour from all sections of the student political spectrum. This is not justice, and we need to loudly demonstrate that we know it. Whatever your opinion on what happened to Willetts, don’t let this travesty stand.