Students graded Cambridge colleges yesterday (19/11) after the Climate League of Oxford and Cambridge (CLOC) published a set of tables ranking climate action performance by college.

Dressed in their gowns, students toured the city’s central colleges, shaming them for their poor records on climate action. Outside the colleges, demonstrators held up placards and banners, as well as signs that imitated the design of A-Level certificates.

At the parade, demonstrators chanted: “Hey ho fossil fuels have got to go”, “divest, delink, decarbonise”, and held banners that read “practice what you teach”, “class clown”, and “epic climate fail.”

Closely resembling the Tompkins and Norrington Table, which ranks the academic performance of colleges at the two universities, positions in the Climate League tables were determined by their performance on decarbonisation, divestment, delinking, and governance. This assessment model took inspiration from the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investment movement.

At Cambridge, the highest-ranking college was Jesus, who received a score of 67, but only a grade C. At the bottom of the table were Murray Edwards, Trinity Hall, Peterhouse, and Lucy Cavendish, who all received U grades and a score total of 5. In total, 24 colleges at the University received U grades.

Cambridge SU Undergraduate President Zak Coleman said: “Rivalry between Oxbridge Colleges has existed for centuries. We hope that the CLOC Tables will channel this competitive spirit towards ambitious - and urgently needed - climate action.”

Coleman continued: “Oxbridge Colleges claim to be world-leading institutions at the forefront of solving global problems. But when we applied the same high standards they use to judge students academically to their responses to the climate emergency, they failed spectacularly.”