Madam,

Ffrindiau Pantycelyn have a fair point when criticising the amount spent on the outgoing vice-chancellor’s leaving party (Cambrian News, last week).

You quote the university’s justification for it: “When a senior member of staff leaves, it is normal practice to hold an event like this.”

This invites the question as to who constitutes a “senior member of staff”. Professors, surely, as I was until I retired in October 2014? Indeed, I believe I was probably the most senior female professor at the university when April McMahon was appointed.

After seven and a half years’ service to the university, the retirement ‘party’ laid on for me in my department (English) consisted of morning coffee with cake for maximum 20 people. Well within the ‘institution’s guidelines’ on expenditure! And the leaving present with which I was presented was a bunch of flowers.

So how to explain the disparity of costs? Different guidelines for university management perhaps? Or the difference between retirement and non-renewal of contract? It would be interesting to know whether the £843 spent on Prof McMahon’s leaving party included the cost of a leaving present.

Yours etc,

Sarah Hutton,

Professor emeritus,