Popular student nightclub Kambar has put 2012 off to a bad start for students after closing down for good.

Kambar had been haunted by rumours for some years of its imminent closure after owner Richard Reynolds put the club up for sale ahead of his retirement.

The self-styled ‘Alternative Nightclub’ was one of the few Cambridge clubs that encouraged student involvement, with nights such as CUSU’s LGBT nights being held there.

However, new owner Abs Attia, who has worked in Cambridge for 28 years, will be transforming the old building into a new champagne bar and dance club, aiming at a distinctly different audience to the venue’s previous student-oriented crowd. As Antonia Stringer (second year, St. Catharine's College) put it, "Cambridge has enough champagne already".

For students, its closure means less choice in an already limited club scene dominated by Luminar’s Cindies and Life, both of which also faced the possibility of closure during Michaelmas term.

Joe Harper, a second year English student at St. Catharine’s painted a bleak outlook asking: "What refuge is left? It's either neon hell or, heaven forbid, the ADC bar...", while Freddie Wagner of Trinity Hall summed up the feeling among Kambar’s regulars stating: "If it's Cindies or home, I'm staying home.”

Tom Pye, in his third year at King’s and co-founder of the night ‘Now that’s what I call Kambar’ bemoaned the state of affairs: “Cambridge just got even bleaker, RIP the popcorn and candy-straws. Shout out to everyone that is gonna have to cry to Drake alone in their rooms instead, that's all there is left. DRY”.

A Facebook page proposing a new ‘Occupy Kambar’ movement has already been set up, making statements like ‘More people spent their gap yah in Kambar than Kam-bodia'.

Cambridge graduate Frankie Waring, a previous regular DJ at the club, had this to say: "We ran nights there back in 2008 and they were some of my best clubbing experiences full stop. It’s weird, really, that it’s closed down as nights like National Rail Disco were very popular and pulled in the numbers".

He continued on the state of Cambridge’s nightlife in general, saying that it has become "dead. Emma Bar practically dwindled to nothing. Kings completely shut down. Clare Cellars taste has got worse and worse. All three of those nights used to be a) completely packed and b) showcasing amazing underground music. The students increasingly seem less interested in those sorts of nights, and just seem to go Cindies and Fez. It’s dead".