Edward Parker Humphreys has been elected as the next CUSU president by a huge majority, defeating current Access & Funding Officer Shadab Ahmed

Parker Humphreys secured over 2,702 votes, securely beating his opponent, who gained 1,442 votes, matching the result of Varsity’s presidential poll. 231 votes were cast to Re-Open Nominations (RON), a figure perhaps supplemented by the fact that the role was contested by just two candidates. 4,475 votes were cast overall.

This year’s CUSU elections saw a 22.2% turnout, with 5,120 votes cast, representing the highest ever number of votes cast in a CUSU election.

Parker Humphreys came out as the clear favourite in Varsity’s recent poll. Of the 664 respondents, 60.4% favoured Parker Humphreys, compared to 26% who said they would be supporting Ahmed. This matched up exactly with the results in reality: with Parker Humphreys eventually gaining 60.3% of votes cast in the CUSU Election.

In all colleges besides Christ’s, Parker Humphreys was favoured by the respondents to Varsity’s poll. The poll suggested that 83.3% of fellow Jesus students supported Parker Humphreys’ presidential bid, while 68.9% of fellow Christs’ students supported Ahmed’s presidential bid

In a recent interview with Varsity, Parker Humphreys, a politics finalist at Jesus, discussed his plans to “crack these big college inequalities” by promoting greater discussion and collaboration between CUSU, the JCRs and MCRs across the University.

Parker Humphreys plans to target issues relating to different stages of student life: he hopes to address post-admissions access by aiming to provide greater financial support, as well as targeting student workload and loneliness: perhaps his most ambitious plan is ‘Welfare Wednesday’, urging the University to cut all contact hours for students on Wednesday afternoon. He also hopes to tackle postgraduate issues, planning to implement a centralised system of postgraduate financial support, and addressing funding for specific subjects.

He hopes to further tackle financial issues for Cambridge students, planning to improve delays in colleges sending hardship funding and students receiving bursaries part-way through term. Discussing these issues, he pointed to the expenses incurred when paying for May Balls, halfway hall, and graduation, which, he says, “are ingrained in the social fabric of Cambridge life”.

Parker Humphreys will be the third former Jesus College JCR president to be CUSU president in the past four years, following in the footsteps of Amatey Doku and Daisy Eyre. He will also be the fourth HSPS student in the role in as many years.