Petition launched in solidarity with Justice4CollegeSupervisors

On 14 November 2021, Cambridge Defend Education (CDE) launched a student petition in solidarity with the Cambridge UCU’s Justice4CollegeSupervisors Campaign’s petition for supervisors. It asks non-teaching students, staff and alumni at Cambridge to call on the 31 college heads to support the Justice4CollegeSupervisors campaign.

The full text of the solidarity petition as well as the form to sign can be found here. 

Justice4CollegeSupervisors was originally launched by the Cambridge University and College Union (UCU) and Student Union (SU) in April 2021. They have launched an open letter to college heads signed by over 500 undergraduate supervisors. 

The Justice4CollegeSupervisors campaign calls for “paid training, a revision of the supervision pay rate to reflect the full number of hours spent on class preparation, and employment contracts for all casualized teachers who supervise undergraduates.”

With respect to their aims, CDE “[believes] students must support their supervisors, people who make a huge impact on their academic experience.” The letter outlines that “at present, supervision work is underpaid and precarious – a situation that benefits neither supervisors nor their students.”

Calling supervisors her “most frequent point of academic contact,” first-year Rebekah Treganna said that “she hopes more students will speak out in support of their supervisors. They are fantastic educators, and they deserve fair pay and working conditions.”

Details about other Cambridge Defends Education campaigns can be found on their Facebook page. The group has campaigned for “empowering, emancipatory and radical vision of education” since their formation in 2010. 

Feature Image Credits: Erin Visaya Neville