2017 Committee Lunch
Date: Wednesday 7th week, Hilary 2017 (2017-03-01)Attendance
Present: Hubert Au (President), Frederick Potts (Vice-President (Administrative)), Thomas Gater (Secretary), Zachary Leather (Treasurer), John Watson (Lindsay), Alastair Nicklin (Sports Rep), Luke Chester (Academic Affairs and Careers Officer), Finn Conway (Academic Affairs and Careers Officer), Calum Holt (Access and Admissions Officer), Leon Kidd (Charities and RAG Officer), Richard Ware (Design & Maintenance Officer), Juliet Flamank (Student Disabilities Officer), Marianne Cain (Student Disabilities Officer), Stephen Hawes (John de Balliol), John Maier (John de Balliol), Felix Heilmann (Environment & Ethics Officer), Suwanja Srikantha (Ethnic Minorities Officer), Amrita Khandpur (International Students Officer), Alexander Gruen (International Students Officer), Cole Horton (LGBTQ Officer), Laura McMillen (Women's Officer), Monique Keane (Women's Officer)
Absent with apologies: Ele Saltmarsh (Dr. WHO), Alexander Fuller (Dr. WHO), Leah Mitchell (Foody), Alexander Toal (Foody), Kathryn Husband (Sports Rep), Isobel Howden (Access and Admissions Officer), Rishem Khattar (Charities and RAG Officer), Steven Rose (Entz Officer), Ellen Cropley (Entz Officer), Julia Davis (Housing Officer), Pallavi Ojha (LGBTQ Officer), Antonia Siu (Website & Computing Officer)
Absent without explanation: Joshua Jones (Environment & Ethics Officer), Simran Uppal (Ethnic Minorities Officer)
Agenda
College Policy on Disability
Fridge Stickers
Codebar Workshop
Women's Bar Event
Minutes
Committee Lunch Minutes Hilary 7th week
Hubert welcomed the committee and invited Juliet to start
College Policy on disability -
They have been to ask Bruce a lot of the questions they were asked at husts. They were going to send this information out but the new plan is to update the JCR website to match the colleges website as people are more likely to look on the JCR page for this information. Bruce recommended that committee as a whole be made more aware:
Rustication isn't a word college or Bruce ever use, they call it 'taking a year out'. It's for a student who needs to 'press a pause button' because they can no longer 'feasibly or plausibly continue their studies' at the moment. All kinds of reasons could cause this and its entirely done at the wishes of the student; a tutor cannot tell you to do it although they would be involved in the process. There is a lot of difference between Balliol and other colleges and university wide policy. All that matters to us is Balliol's policy. Bruce wants us to know that his priority is always supporting a student through to completion of their degree. Whilst you're gone you can keep your card and continue with the counselling service and online stuff. Bruce keeps in contact with everyone who is away. Unfortunately Bruce can't change the university wide policy on prohibiting repeated terms. He would like to change this. The JCR website has been updated.
Marianne and Juliet are now quite in the know about all these policies so hopefully they can answer any questions:
Zack asks about fees? Bruce will try to help with that – he will contact student finance England and figure out how much you should pay. It's mainly done by term and there is flexibility - 5th week is broadly speaking the cut-off point.
How do the SDOs feel about this?
They are aware that gossip spreads fast and they don't like that people can't leave quietly. Wanted to think of ways to better protect privacy and in a small environment like college this is very difficult. They aim to try to change general attitudes towards it rather than gun for some kind of policy beign put in place. Marianne likes that college considers each student on a case by case basis because it allows college to be as helpful as possible. It does make ti harder to reassure people because the policy is deliberately vague so we don't know exactly what will happen.
Richard: Three years ago you couldn't contact college or people who stayed here, is this still the case?
Juliet – that's not the case at the moment, but the case by case basis policy means this could happen - but hopefully only with a legitimate reason. Marianne – Bruce has to stay in contact and some students have wanted to stay separate whilst they were on leave. It's definitely not a hard case that people must leave LEAVE while they're gone any more. Bruce has worked to change that.
There will be no email sent round because an email might cause panic but a lower key information spread will allow people who want to to find it.
Stickers:
Amrita - We want £5 to get many more stickers having tested out last time on 20. 150 stickers for fridges. Should be great. “Will make everything better” - Freddy
Ali is very concerned about sticky residue on fridges. Strong reassurance form Amrita that this won't be a problem. No objections and £5.00 passes.
Codebar workshop:
Monique – had a meeting with dean and an old member about the Codebar workshop. Having a certain number of places for Balliol members doesn't jive with the charities policy. College can't (as a charity) let out spaces without a benefit for the college's members. Utsav messaged her to say that a group of Balliol people would be keen to run the workshop themselves. Codebar would have brought pizza and now they aren't involved monique would like money to provide food. Maybe £25. Also does anyone have any thoughts on how to run it?
Suwanja - computers are an issue with food – they'd run it in the jcr to solve this problem. The people who are doing the workshop will have varying abilities and this can be very difficult to teach. Suwanja and the WOs will talk separately to sort out the details. Would there definitely be an interest? There has been an interest so far and now it's not Codebar it can be opened to the whole JCR – it'll be more low key with the women's officers doing the admin and Utsav and friends doing the teaching. £25 seems reasonable for snacks? No objections, £25 passes.
Bar event:
Monique - WOs want to do an event, potentially after the coding to get some women down to the bar Wednesday of 8th week. Any questions? What're you going to do? Chill and drink, do a bit of a bar set if that's ok? Cameron will look into it. Make a facebook event. No other questions.
AOB
Monique: They want money for Mortal Kombat (I have been reliably informed that this game is spelled with a k by multiple people since last week) - £40? Can we get a 2nd hand copy? We will try to. Zack says the money should pass only with a proviso that they look for the cheapest possible. Emphasis on UP TO £40. Zack did some research and it should be adjusted to £16. Postage and packaging? Pass up to £20. Any objections? No objections. £20 passes.
Richard – the safe broke, we bought a shit safe in the past, if we bought a new one it should be better. Would people actually put things in the safe? We could incentivize them to leave the games there by not re buying games that get lost if they weren't left there. Richard will bring a GM motion this week.
Any other AOB? Hubert doesn't know what the A and O stand for in AOB. There is none though.