It’s a Monday afternoon at 3pm, and I’m in the library, glued to my laptop. To an unsuspecting passer-by I am engrossed in my supo reading, but the fact I’m concentrating this hard means I cannot possibly be working. With the panicked assistance of a 12-person group chat, I’m trying, through sheer force of will, to fix the glitches in John’s May Ball ticketing platform.

After miraculously surviving the ticket queue, and battling thousands of my fellow students for the glory of giving one of the richest colleges in Cambridge £275, I started to wonder where my money was going. I went to Jesus May Ball as a fresher, costing me £70 less and offering a pretty perfect night (that I’m still not convinced John’s can top, even with a bigger budget). Now, as a member of my College’s Garden Party committee, I’m curious how much money it really requires for people to have a good night, and if the sheer amount bigger May Balls are spending can ever be justified.

In 2015 a Varsity investigation showed that Trinity May Ball “cost an eye-watering £286,000 excluding VAT,” an absurd amount that can only have increased in the last ten years. They spent £44,000 on just entertainment, and £12,000 on fireworks alone. Only this week Robinson has had to cancel their May Ball due to low ticket sales and the cost of putting on an event. Trinity’s budget sounds insane, and when we hear these figures we do have a moment of horror, but as a community we write off the amount big name May Balls cost as a part of the experience, a necessary evil to enable the ‘Cambridge experience’. For a College refusing to divest from arms companies to line its own pockets, surely they could stop pouring money down the drain every summer and reduce their yearly May Ball budget a little?

“As a community we write off the amount big name May Balls cost as a part of the experience”

And is any of this money strictly necessary to give us the night we want? I’m on the Murray Edwards Garden Party Committee this year, and with a fraction of Trinity’s budget (17% for those wondering) and none of its prestige we’ve managed to plan a party with everything students (or at least I) really want: cheap tickets, unlimited food and alcohol, live music. No, it’s not the same experience as John’s or Trinity, and no one is claiming that it is. But it has made me question whether these colleges are throwing money away excessively while smaller May events meticulously budget.

Bigger colleges are flaunting their wealth every year while university becomes increasingly expensive, with Cambridge somehow voting to increase the cost of a degree. It’s hard to reconcile how the University can claim to need more money and simultaneously pay thousands of pounds for a state-of-the-art drone show or security to prevent break-ins. Somehow the burden of paying for it all falls on the student, coughing up more and more money for accommodation, tuition fees, and, maybe frivolously, for May Ball tickets.

“It’s hard to reconcile how the University can claim to need more money and simultaneously pay thousands of pounds for a state-of-the-art drone show”

They’re a definite luxury, but one that feels near essential when you’re surrounded by people talking about the long list of May Week events they’re going to. If you listen to some people, you virtually haven’t been to Cambridge if you haven’t been to John’s or Trinity, you have to go to your own college event, and somehow you need new clothes for all of it to get the optimal pictures. People end up feeling excluded from their peers for no reason – if these colleges have the money to spare, then surely more of it should be spent increasing the number of accessible general release tickets.

We might be thanking God that we got the privilege of giving a college hundreds of pounds that might go to buying fancy entry wristbands, but it might be time to start questioning if they’re worth the cost.

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