Students and supervisors gathered on King’s Parade yesterday (27/5) to protest the university’s “cruel, exploitative and unsustainable” treatment of staff.

The demonstration, organised by Justice4CollegeSupervisors (J4CS), saw a series of speeches in favour of “fair pay”, a contract and paid training for supervisors.

J4CS says the rally was originally intended to take place outside a meeting of the senior tutors committee at Clare College. According to Fergal Hanna, an organiser for J4CS, the committee meeting was moved online after senior tutors found out about the protest. The demonstration was then relocated to King’s Parade.

Hanna opened the speeches, saying that the campaign had a recent “win” after the university decided to pay for any extra supervisor training.

Hanna told Varsity that he regretted that the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning training was excluded from the policy.

Hanna then talked about his own experience supervising chemistry students, saying that supervisors were paid for 20 minutes marking per student up to four students, with an extra 30 minutes preparation for the supervision.

According to Hanna, a representative of the Senior Bursars’ Committee had told protesting supervisors “if you’re going over twenty minutes in marking work, you shouldn’t be supervising”

Hanna went on to talk about the university continuing to take money from oil companies saying “at least give it to us if you’re so dirty to take it”.

Daniel Zeichner, Labour MP for Cambridge, then spoke, telling the crowd: “I’m here to show my support for your cause. It’s 2022. This university, these colleges, have a lot to be proud of. Why have we still got the systems from centuries ago?

“I’ll say to people in the university: institutions survive when they change with the time. If they don’t change, change happens anyway, happens when people apply pressure. Thank you for what you’re doing.”

Zeichner went on to talk about how campaigning can bring change, referencing the government’s recent U-turn on a windfall tax on oil and gas companies, first proposed by the Labour Party.

Rebekah, a first year student representing Cambridge Defend Education, said that supervisors were the “backbone of Cambridge’s education system” and the way they were treated by the university “cruel, exploitative and unsustainable.”

“How can we be expected to learn to the best of our abilities when my supervisors don’t have time to mark my work properly because they simply aren’t paid for it. When they can’t focus in my supervisions because they’re overworked to the point of exhaustion. Because they are stressed about finances despite working for one of the richest universities in the world”.

Hanna, who was monitoring the committee meeting on his phone, told the crowd that the tutor meeting had been delayed because of technical issues. This was met with jeers and heckling. Since the speeches had already finished, Hanna apologised for the event “petering out”.

This article was corrected on 31/5 to clarify that the campaign was also asking for a contract and paid training for all supervisors and the specifics of supervisor payment.