Several Cambridge colleges are now offering discounted May Ball tickets to Emma students, following the cancellation of its June Event.

Downing, Sidney Sussex, Magdalene, Corpus Christi, and King’s have all announced that Emma students will be able to access discounted tickets to their May Week events.

On Thursday (13/03) Emma June Event (EJE) ticket holders received an email which read: “Unfortunately, due to lower-than-expected external ticket sales, we would not have been able to deliver an Event to the standard we had expected.”

It continued: “This decision was not made lightly, and we share your disappointment in not being able to host the celebration we had envisioned.”

The email added that all ticket holders would receive a full refund.

Downing May Ball posted an Instagram story which read: “We will be doing reduced priced tickets for all EJE ticket holders who want to transfer their tickets over to Downing May Ball,” adding that further details would follow in an Instagram post.

Sidney Sussex has also announced that Emma students will be able to attend their garden party for the same price as Sidney students, at a £13 discount compared to the price of tickets for other Cambridge students.

Emma students wanting to attend Magdalene May Ball have been given a 10% discount off the standard ticket price, while King’s Affair has pledged to match the original £121 ticket price that Emma students were going to pay for their own College’s event.

This comes after Downing also offered discounted tickets to Robinson students following the announcement that their May Ball would be replaced by a “mega bop” for 2025.

One student from Emmanuel College told Varsity: “While Emma students have been offered price match tickets by other colleges, they are not paid on the college bill; by week eight it seems unreasonable to ask students who support themselves via student loan to have enough left to pay for other May Balls.”

“As such a lot of self-financed students will lose out on May Balls who are supposedly trying to make [it] more inclusive,” they added.

Emma’s June Event, the theme of which was set to be ‘Courting Fate: A Night of Suits and Symbols’ was due to take place on 22 June. A launch party took place on 19 February.

Tickets went on sale between 20 and 22 February, with non-Emma students holding a bursary being offered a discounted price of £109, as opposed to the full £141 for non-Emma students.

Prior to the Event’s cancellation, students from Christ’s, Caius, Churchill, St Catherine’s, Fitzwilliam, Robinson, and Lucy Cavendish were offered a reduced ticket price of £121 – the same price as a standard ticket for Emma students.