Cambridge University's new Student Union president, Gerard Tully

UNIVERSITIES are staring into an abyss of 
tuition fees, rising graduate unemployment, and calls for fairer access and, although 
Cambridge University is one of the best in the world, it still faces some of 
the greatest challenges in its 800-year history.

Protesters rally outside the Senate House during last year's tuition fees protest

“Cambridge is good, but it’s not good enough,” said Gerard Tully, the new Cambridge University Students’ Union (CUSU) president. “It’s an exciting time to be leading the student union because of what happened last year. There are 
still a lot of issues that still need to be resolved.”

Last year Cambridge saw unprecedented protests as hundreds of students took to the city streets on several occasions in anger at the university’s £9,000 tuition fee bid, academics held silent protests as they turned on their own institution, a room in the nerve centre of the Old Schools was occupied for more than a week, and CUSU forced a university climbdown on plans to almost halve student bursaries.

But Gerard, who campaigned to “fight for students, not for policy”, said it will be different 
this year.

“It’s hard to know,” he said. “At this point last year we didn’t know what was about to hit us – I can’t see the same exceptional student activity we had last year.

“But what we have now is a pool of students who are familiar with the issues and are interested. They got involved last year, so it’s just about finding the right idea to channel that energy this year.”

Gerard’s predecessor Rahul Mansigani was often seen at the front of marches supporting the student cause. It seems Gerard has no intention of changing that.

The student, who reads archeology at Trinity Hall, wants to turn his attention to access. The product of a grammar school in Belfast, he was lucky enough to be spurred on to applying for Cambridge, but he knows that is not the norm in Britain.

“It’s a crying shame. We know there are really bright kids in comprehensives who are never given incentives or the belief they can get into Oxbridge,” said Gerard.

“It’s not malicious, it’s just people don’t understand sometimes – there is a knowledge and understanding gap.”

He wants to push the university into spending more money and expanding the current shadowing scheme which sees sixth formers spend two days with an undergraduate to get a taste for Cambridge and a course of their choice. He wants every college to have someone working full-time on widening participation.

But Gerard also has concerns the workings of CUSU neglect its own students.

“CUSU suffers from the collegiate system,” he said.

“There is a very misconceived idea of what we are – sometimes people think we’re a bunch of radicalised lefties who don’t know anything about anything. Practically we need a very different student union in many ways.

“We need to engage with the students. We can only do things if we get students involved. Any messages we have will come across stronger if they come from the students.”

While the tuition fees debate looks to have come to a close with students on the losing team, 
Gerard stills see a fight to be had in the “unreasonable fee hikes” graduates see. Some fees rose 
by as much as £4,000 for this 
academic year.

Still only 21, Gerard will be president for a year but has no plans for post-reign. Many former presidents have gone on to be politicians, including former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke and first non-white CUSU president Pav Akhtar, a Labour politician and trade unionist.