Sometimes (very occasionally) I feel sorry for the Cambridge Union. When they get nice, non-controversial speakers nobody turns up, and when they invite controversial ones protesters invariably accompany the crowds. Both scenarios have their own set of problems, but at least normally they only have to deal with one at a time. Last Friday however, they managed the spectacular feat of inviting a speaker nobody wanted to hear but everybody wanted to protest against.

Despite ticketing the event due to expected demand, the speech by Universities Minister David Willetts only managed to half-fill the chamber, leaving poor committee members hastily scrambling to find more attendees with pleading Facebook and Twitter posts. Even more embarrassingly, two of the audience members didn’t actually want to hear Willetts speak but just wanted to hold up a sign saying “Fuck You Willetts”, and had to subsequently be removed from the chamber – decreasing the audience size even further.

“They were so nice to my face beforehand and then they pulled that”, tweeted one dejected Union committee member. “I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t for the deception”, he said, learning the hard way that even protesters in Cambridge are largely polite and pleasant, up until the point they unfurl their profanity-filled flags.

CUSU are also feeling sorry for themselves this week, after a laughably low turnout of fourteen per cent in the recent elections, down from around twenty per cent in recent years. Perhaps as a result, whoever is controlling the CUSU Twitter account has become increasingly passive aggressive, naming and shaming colleges with low participation in the CUSU Big Survey which was launched to access students’ view of CUSU. I can’t help thinking, however, that tagging individual colleges' Twitter accounts is a particularly useless way to boost participation, when the majority of these accounts are run by the development office rather than students. Admittedly though, the thought of development offices across Cambridge getting thoroughly confused as they try to remember what CUSU is, is particularly delightful.

In more positive news, this week has seen the launch of the ‘I, too, am Cambridge’ campaign by Cambridge’s Black and Minority Ethnic campaign, highlighting some of the issues BME students still have to deal with whilst at University. Following on from the successful ‘I need feminism because…’ campaign ran by the Women’s Campaign, the event has provided a welcome look at some of the issues that still exist for BME students.

Finally I leave you with the news that the University of Cambridge fell another place, to fourth, in this year’s Times Higher Education world rankings. All this is irrelevant however, because this week the Cambridge Blue Boat was revealed to be heavier than their Oxford counterparts and, as everybody knows, how quickly a crew can row from one place to another is the only meaningful way to judge a University’s quality.