On one of the posters made by Cambridge Defend Education (CDE) during the staff pensions dispute, the group of student activists had written: “Dear Toope™, 12:30; Thurs, here (King’s Parade). See you then”.

In early March, CDE began an occupation of Old Schools – which houses the central university offices – as part of their protests against the proposed staff pension changes. This was the first student occupation of the central University administrative building since the 2011 tuition fee hike, and student activists listed an open meeting with Toope as one of the conditions for the direct action to cease.

CDE said that the open meeting was simply “in line with Toope’s promises to being open and transparent”. Calls that Toope should be more perceptive to criticism reflected a belief among many students and staff that University leaders must be held more forcefully to account for decisions and directions taken at the highest levels of Cambridge’s governance structures.

There was a particular frustration among staff with the fact that the University had initially expressed strong support in 2017 for the controversial reforms to the pensions scheme, as the proposals promised to level a lower burden of risk on employer institutions, despite later changes to Cambridge’s position amid the pension strikes.

And despite the fact that reforms to the pensions scheme for Cambridge staff were dealt with on a national level, staff and student activists argued that Toope had an opportunity to play an essential lobbying role in country-level talks to steer the proposals to being more favourable for staff.

As the strikes continued into mid-March, the University relaxed its position in favour of staffs’ demands for their pensions, including proposing that Cambridge pay higher contributions toward the scheme, and that it accept greater risk in the short term. Three days into the five-day student occupation of Old Schools, Toope wrote a letter to The Times decrying the “fundamental error” of university marketisation where students are “reduced to mere consumers”.

In an open meeting attended by over 500 students and staff in mid-March, Toope agreed largely with audience members on pensions issues and on employment precarity in the higher education sector. He criticised the University’s response to the pensions proposals which it submitted in September 2017 as being done “far too quickly”, where there “probably wasn’t enough thought” given to various factors at play for staff.