CUSU Council has voted to allocate an additional £200 in order to help Cambridge students travel to London for the ‘United for Education’ demonstration being held by the National Union of Students (NUS) and University and College Union (UCU) on 19th November.

The additional funding is on top of £340 assigned by Council on 24th October for the hire of a coach to London, with costs being split with Anglia Ruskin University.

However, as the motion presented to Council tonight noted, “places on the coach have already been filling up faster than in previous years, with the main push for signups yet to happen”, with signups having opened shortly after the initial £340 of funding had been secured.

The additional funding will be used to hire another coach, which must be wheelchair-accessible, in the event that spaces on the first run out, with any of the money that is unused to be returned to CUSU.

Proposing the motion, CUSU Education Officer Roberta Huldisch said that “it would be completely reasonable for people not to have thought about signing up”, given that signups opened a long time in advance of the event.

The reason for allocating a further £200 rather than another £340 is down to the fact that the second coach will be smaller than the first, which has space for around 50 people and will be split with staff and students from Anglia Ruskin University.

The second coach will be shared with the Cambridge branch of the University and College Union (CUCU), which represents academic and academic-related staff. Huldisch told Council that CUCU will pay proportionate to the number of seats their members eventually take up on the second coach.

According to an NUS press release, the ‘United for Education’ demonstration “will represent a rallying call for free, accessible and quality further and higher education across the UK, and to demand an end to the marketisation of university and college education.”

A similar rally, dubbed the ‘National Demonstration for Free Education’ was attended by around 15 Cambridge and ARU students last November.