2017 Committee Lunch

Date: Wednesday 8th week, Hilary 2017 (2017-03-08)

Attendance

Present: Hubert Au (President), Frederick Potts (Vice-President (Administrative)), Thomas Gater (Secretary), Zachary Leather (Treasurer), John Watson (Lindsay), Ele Saltmarsh (Dr. WHO), Luke Chester (Academic Affairs and Careers Officer), Finn Conway (Academic Affairs and Careers Officer), Calum Holt (Access and Admissions Officer), Isobel Howden (Access and Admissions Officer), Rishem Khattar (Charities and RAG Officer), Richard Ware (Design & Maintenance Officer), Juliet Flamank (Student Disabilities Officer), Steven Rose (Entz Officer), Stephen Hawes (John de Balliol), John Maier (John de Balliol), Cole Horton (LGBTQ Officer), Antonia Siu (Website & Computing Officer)

Absent with apologies: Alexander Fuller (Dr. WHO), Leah Mitchell (Foody), Alexander Toal (Foody), Alastair Nicklin (Sports Rep), Marianne Cain (Student Disabilities Officer), Ellen Cropley (Entz Officer), Felix Heilmann (Environment & Ethics Officer), Amrita Khandpur (International Students Officer), Alexander Gruen (International Students Officer), Julia Davis (Housing Officer), Pallavi Ojha (LGBTQ Officer), Laura McMillen (Women's Officer), Monique Keane (Women's Officer)

Absent without explanation: Kathryn Husband (Sports Rep), Leon Kidd (Charities and RAG Officer), Joshua Jones (Environment & Ethics Officer), Simran Uppal (Ethnic Minorities Officer), Suwanja Srikantha (Ethnic Minorities Officer)

Agenda

Present for Richard

Money For Women's event 

Minutes

Committee lunch Minutes 8th week Hilary

 

We all sat in a lovely circle

 

Hubert: Richards birthday?

 

Zack: If you object you’re not a very nice person. £21.50 for Richard, who wanted straight money for a gift.

 

No objections and the motion passes

 

Juliet: The Women’s Officers are striking for repeal. Coding workshop is being postponed to next term. Was going to be short notice. They have the idea completely in place. The £25 that passed for snacks they no longer need but they are having a bar event for Internations Women’s Day and they want snacks to help it be less purely alcoholic. They want £25 for this.

 

Hubert: Any objections?

 

Richard: Could they get pantry food?

 

Juliet: They want chips and grapes and stuff that draws people.

 

No objections now - motion passes.

 

Will  - Welfare in the JCR. The charity musical and the JDB had mixed experiences with how welfare works. They’re not clear on how it works. So far they’ve spoken to the Drs Who and now want to open dialogue about what sort of things welfare should be ‘welfaring’.

 

John - They looked to the governing documents to clarify what the relationship between JDB and welfare is and it’s not official anywhere. Certain things are taken for granted - if an individual is mention they get veto power for example. If there is hateful content that should go, but the whole system is ‘fairly impressionistic’ which leads to creative and logistical difficulties. The one man one veto process means anyone vetoing anything for any reason can have broad ramifications. They want to clarify the process.

 

Hubert - So the main issue are clarity and timing?

 

Will - What sort of thing should be permitted to be welfare? Some things are obvious. Hate speech is obvious and they feel we can all agree on those occasions.

 

John - It’s not clear cut when it comes to censoring controversial things rather than outright hatred. Does welfare see it as its job to make sure that material conforms to a political point of view? It’s not clear if that’s what the JCR wants.

 

Will - For example a couple of lines were taken out very late on in the musical, no one said they were inherently offensive and they would like clarity about what the problem was.

 

Zack - Welfare subcommittee aren’t here right now, mostly, so there’s not a lot we can do right now. Maybe discuss this at a welfare subcommittee meeting?

 

[Note that 6 members of welfare subcommittee were present at the meeting and we had apologies sent from 7. There are 15 members of Welfare Subcommittee.]

 

Juliet - What we need is a clarity about who needs to be making these decisions, and when and exactly what criteria they are supposed to make these decisions based on.

 

Will - Yes that would be good, but also we want a conversation about what sort of things welfare should be welfaring.

 

Izzy - This proposed meeting with welfare sub could be constructive but an email clarifying would be good and in the wider JCR do we want a ‘policing culture’. Since she’s been on committee she’s found it’s not as she thought it was. Better communication would be good.

 

Hubert - Is part of the problem that the communication was not clear during handover?

 

Stephen - the vetting process was sort of legendary

 

Hubert - so not clear

 

Will - It’s not clear anywhere in the standing orders - we need to know what the remit is. They see all issues of offense and problematic content falling under their remit and they need clarity.

 

Stephen - A meeting with everyone to discuss this would be good. It’s a wider issue that just welfare subcommittee - there’s a variety of opinions on what the role of welfare is. The J de B was torn down by someone not on committee recently. That kind of issue might not occur if we talked about it more. It’s a failing of the whole process if this kind of thing happens.

 

Hubert - there’s not much we can do right now, Alex and Ele could organise something - you’ve had some conversations but a wider discussion could be productive. At a GM potentially. Are you planning to sort out a proposal for how you want this to work?

 

Will - There are so many points to be decided upon will take lots of time and lots of conversations.

 

Stephen - This would be quite a drawn out discussion - could we have an extra meeting devised for this to be discussed?

 

Hubert - Yeah of course, similar to the meeting on the new rep that Calum organised. Might take a while because as you say it’s a complicated issue. The meeting wouldn’t have to be binding or at all official but I would chair if you wanted.

 

Will - It is something we should all be concerned about. At the moment it’s all relying on good faith. It should be tangible and specific.

 

Hubert - A lot of standard practice isn’t written down and much of the JCR is run on good faith. But clarity is definitely a good thing.

 

Juliet - Simon Lewis encountered similar things and they might have a lot of opinions on this.

 

Hubert - Seems a good place to wrap it up.

 

Will - Richard you’re old, [he may have actually said ‘you’ve been here longest’]  how did it used to work?

 

Richard - Since I’ve been here it’s worked as it does now, the reason for this is that there’s only been one person who wasn’t a straight white man as J de B in the last few years. It can be difficult to have perspective from that position so we need a lot of different opinions. It got a lot better the year before he arrived, it used to be very ramshackle. I think you should discuss it all in one place to collate opinions, as piecemeal discussions can miss things.

 

Hubert - Sounds like we’ve covered what we can here, anyone have any other business? Have a good vac!