MORE than 100 students and alumni have taken their battle to save Wales’ oldest university to the Senedd.

Former students of Lampeter University - including Escape to the Country TV presenter Jules Hudson - travelled to Cardiff from all over the UK to take part in a four-hour protest outside the Welsh Parliament on Tuesday, 21 January.

They were joined by Lampeter townspeople and councillors, along with current students, who came down by coach from the former St David’s University College.

The students face having to move in September to a different campus in Carmarthen under controversial plans by the University of Wales Trinity St David (UWTSD) to relocate all humanities courses away from Lampeter.

This would end undergraduate education after almost 200 years in the Ceredigion town.

Speeches of support were given by several members of Senedd, including Jane Dodds, Cefin Campbell and Adam Price, town councillor and former student Rhys Bebb Jones and TV presenter and ex-archaeology student Jules Hudson.

Ceredigion MS Elin Jones called for a more appropriate time frame for the decision and for current students to be able to complete their courses in Lampeter, and for the Welsh government to intervene.

Another speech was by Anne Ponisch, the daughter of a former Lampeter principal, John Lloyd Thomas, who saved the college from a previous closure threat and after whom a hall of residence is named.

Poems were read by former student Jane Nicholas and protesters sang Dafydd Iwan’s classic Yma O Hyd.

The protest was organised by Esther Weller of the Lampeter Society, a group of thousands of alumni.

She said: “We are receiving great support from Senedd members who are sharing our call for the Welsh Government to intervene.

“We believe the closure of the oldest higher education institution in Wales is very much a matter for Welsh Government.

“We are calling on the Welsh Government to work with UWTSD to explore all other potential options to give Lampeter a future as exciting and significant as its past.”

A petition, which calls on the university and Welsh Government to create a ‘viable, sustainable plan for the long-term future of the Lampeter campus, has come close to collecting 6,000 signatures online and on paper.

University of Wales Trinity Saint David said when announcing its plans to move courses to Carmarthen, said: “Despite a range of innovative ideas to develop new courses to attract a larger number of students to our Lampeter campus these have not delivered, there has been a steady decline in the number of students being taught in-person.

“We now have a total cohort of 197 full-time students, 92 of which are undergraduates, being taught on campus in Lampeter, with 112 core staff and a number of casual staff associated with the Lampeter campus. This is not a sustainable situation, and the university must take action.

“Operationally, the Lampeter campus costs us about £2.7M per year to run and the backlog maintenance and compliance costs for the campus are estimated at £33.5M (which is subject to inflation).”