The Independent Student Newspaper
Number 792 Friday 2nd October 2015 Published in Cambridge since 1947
24 Culture: Johannes Hjorth
30 Autumn Fashion Tips JOE ROBINSON
13 Interview: Runciman 18 Columnists
www.varsity.co.uk
Borysiewicz delivers warning on Brexit Sarah Collins News Correspondent
Line-up: Proctors process into the Senate House before the Vice-Chancellor’s annual Michaelmas address yesterday (see p.4)
CUSU in crisis Varsity News Team Cambridge University Students’ Union has been forced to seek a bailout from the university in June 2015 in order to plug a funding black hole, a document released in September reveals. A lack of funds left CUSU unable to fulfil its commitments to students without accepting “emergency funding” under “exceptional” circumstances from the university. The minutes of a meeting of the Council Committee for the
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Supervision of the Student Unions, held on 11th May, reveal the full extent of the discrepancy between the forecasted finances and the true state of CUSU’s accounts. The document quotes CUSU as having requested over £100,000 from the university in emergency funding and “to replace... lost income”. The Council Committee, which includes King’s First Bursar Dr Keith Carne and Emmanuel Reverend Dr Jeremy Caddick, noted that it would be “difficult” for the Committee to have confidence in future CUSU budgets.
Despite not achieving its 2014/15 income targets, CUSU has still forecast what the Committee calls “ambitious” income targets in its budget for the next academic year, and has refused to apologise for putting services at risk after “commercial services and fundraising… underperformed”. In the meeting in May, CUSU General Manager Mark McCormack, who as The Tab reported controversially enjoyed an 18 per cent pay rise of £6,500 in 2013, stated that CUSU expected a loss of £67,000 by the end of the 2014/15 financial year.
McCormack has yet to reply to Varsity’s request for comment. The failure of the Guide to Excellence to generate the extra expected £40,945 made what the Committee called a “significant hole” in CUSU finances, the document reveals. The minutes state that “[t]he income from external publications contracts provided a core part of the funding on which CUSU relied to support its services for students”. The minutes also state that CUSU “failed to achieve its targets for [commercial] income in 2014-15”. Continued on page 4
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge has suggested that British exist from the European Union could disadvantage British scientific research and development. In a debate held at Downing College, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz warned that the relationship between the university and the businesses and enterprises that enable high-quality scientific research could be irrevocably damaged. Borysiewicz has previously voiced concerns over the consequences of ‘Brexit’ in an impassioned address at an event celebrating the 650th year of the University of Vienna. He has made clear that the future success of British universities such as Cambridge is intimately bound up with continued British membership of the EU. He has argued that this success should not be jeopardised in the name of “short-term electoral success” fuelled by a “political debate on immigration ... based on fear and emotion”. In 2013, Britain received £1.45 billion of European Union funding for research and development. Borsiewicz warned that withdrawal of this funding and Britain’s isolation from the Eurozone, with which it does over half of its international trade, would require the University of Cambridge to set up science parks in EU countries which receive the funding, such as France and Germany. He emphasised that such proposals were not scaremongering but a sober assessment of the circumstances following British EU withdrawal. During the debate, he stated that such plans were “not a threat”, but instead reflected the “reality of the world” as he imagined it if Britain were to withdraw from the European Union in the upcoming referendum.
TERM LISTINGS, FELLOW JAILED, REFUGEE CRISIS, DANIEL ZEICHNER MP