The Monday Steak Club, a student-run organisation at Churchill College, hosted a ‘Meat & Greet’ BBQ event on Monday evening. The conservatively-sized event had only ten attendees, and was advertised as an act of “charcoal-fuelled defiance” against the “eco-fascist agenda.”   

The steak-lovers met at Leckhampton, the Corpus Christi postgraduate accomodation, for their meaty act of political resistance. The ‘Meat & Greet’ was established in the wake of growing discontent among some right-leaning students at Cambridge over Churchill’s decision to introduce meat-free Mondays.

The sausage enthusiasts and aspiring libertarians claimed that the “eco-fascists” of the Churchill JCR, which democratically decided in favour of meat-free Mondays, are “shamefully polluting our university.” The Monday Streak Club “resent” the Churchill JCR and their “attempt to restrict our freedom of decision-making.” We're sure Winston would be proud.

Harry Clynch, a first-year studying English at Churchill, is the leader of this right-wing coup and told Violet that this cow-ardly liberal authoritarianism wasn’t unique to Churchill: “It has been experienced at other colleges as well. Peterhouse tried to before.”

Clynch said that the Monday Steak Club isn’t linked to the Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA), but admits he is a member. Some of the other faces at the BBQ would also be familiar to regular CUCA event attendees.  

Monday Steak Club regularly post memes on their Facebook page, and Clynch is keen to assert the more jovial edge to their activities. He told Violet they are “not actually comparing [those in favour of meat-free Mondays] to Hitler, annoying as they are.”

Meat-free Mondays are a growing trend in Cambridge as students become conscious of the environmental benefits of vegetarianism. Clynch accepts that global warming is “happening and that we need to do something about it” but is “yet to hear a convincing argument that this improves the situation much.”