PETERHOUSE – In what seems to be becoming something of a Michaelmas tradition, a Cambridge JCR will be asking its members whether or not they ought to remain affiliated to CUSU later this term.

This year it is the turn of Peterhouse’s JCR – the grandiosely named Sexcentenary Club (or, less grandiosely, the ‘Sex Club’ for short) – to decide whether their future lies with or away from the University-wide union, when they vote in a referendum on the matter in Week Four.

The referendum, which is scheduled to run between the 28th and 29th October, with a debate to be held on 26th October, comes on the heels of a letter sent to the Sex Club’s Committee in Easter term, claiming that CUSU had “let down Jewish students” in the way they had dealt with the furore over Malia Bouattia’s controversial election to the presidency of the National Union of Students (NUS).

The letter, which was signed by 17 anonymous Petreans, was sent on the day after Cambridge voted to remain part of NUS, and argued that this latest failing added to “longer term concerns about the organisation’s incompetence”, concluding that the only way forward was to split from CUSU.

The letter resulted in an open meeting of the Sex Club, with a referendum on CUSU on the agenda alongside another contentious issue – the return of a PS3 to the JCR, discussion of which, according the minutes, was delayed until Michaelmas.

Just who the ‘Peterhouse Seventeen’ are, however, is curiously murky territory – strongly suspected signatories include University Challenge winner Julian Sutcliffe, and Eloise Davies, whose 21st birthday cake (a scaled-down replica of the 700-year-old college rendered in sponge and fondant icing) shocked Daily Mail readers in March.

The identities of the primary backers of a so-called ‘Pexit’ is not the only unknown in this latest potential secession from CUSU. While Peterhouse weren’t the only college where dissatisfaction with CUSU had reached calls-for-a-referendum levels at the end of Easter term, they are thus by far the only college pressing ahead and putting the matter to a vote – rumblings and rumours of referendums at Queens’ and Clare having come to nothing.

It all begs the question of whether CUSU affiliation is still the hot political issue it was at Peterhouse in the heightened climate of rampant democracy that took over the University before the long summer vacation.

Indeed, past disaffiliation pushes and moves to re-affiliate have hardly captured the imagination of the student body at large.

Having disaffiliated in 2006, Trinity College Students’ Union (TCSU) later re-affiliated in a move that one Trinitarian said was met with “absolute apathy”, and which was only possible because a Varsity reporter pushed the attendance of the re-affiliation meeting up to meet the quorum.

Last year, students at Fitz expressed their lack of interest by voting not to have a vote on leaving CUSU. The last time a college actually put their CUSU membership to a vote, the result was a landslide result in favour of Churchill retaining its ties.

If history is anything to go by, Peterhouse’s referendum probably won’t change anything and, even if it does, it’s unlikely many people will notice.