2017 Committee Lunch

Date: Wednesday 1st week, Trinity 2017 (2017-04-26)

Present: Hubert Au (President), Steven Rose (Vice-President (Administrative)), Hannah Williams (Secretary), Zachary Leather (Treasurer), John Watson (Lindsay), Ele Saltmarsh (Dr. WHO), Alexander Fuller (Dr. WHO), Leah Mitchell (Foody), Alexander Toal (Foody), Kathryn Husband (Sports Rep), Alastair Nicklin (Sports Rep), 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), Mick Yang (Affiliations Officer), Leon Kidd (Charities and RAG Officer), Rishem Khattar (Charities and RAG Officer), Richard Ware (Design & Maintenance Officer), Marianne Cain (Student Disabilities Officer), Juliet Flamank (Student Disabilities Officer), Steven Rose (Entz Officer), Ellen Cropley (Entz Officer), Stephen Hawes (John de Balliol), John Maier (John de Balliol), Joshua Jones (Environment & Ethics Officer), Felix Heilmann (Environment & Ethics Officer), Simran Uppal (Ethnic Minorities Officer), Suwanja Srikantha (Ethnic Minorities Officer), Amrita Khandpur (International Students Officer), Alexander Gruen (International Students Officer), Julia Davis (Housing Officer), Cole Horton (LGBTQ Officer), Pallavi Ojha (LGBTQ Officer), Antonia Siu (Website & Computing Officer), Laura McMillen (Women's Officer), Monique Keane (Women's Officer)

Agenda

1. Matters arising 

Secretary Co-options

Drama Sec co-options 

Ball

Open welfare meeting 

Good lad workshops 

Dani's Birthday 

Recycling 

2. AOB

Minutes



Hubert welcomes committee and starts with secretary cooptions.

 

Secretary Cooptions

 

Flora is first candidate. She says she would like to do this and it would be fun and that she likes JCR and also likes all members of JCR, which she only recently realised. Flora also likes the JCR as community and thinks it works well. Flora likes boring things and rules which is appropriate for a secretary.

 

Monique asks for experience, Flora says she organised lots of teams in school and ran a large debating society. Hasn’t been secretary for an organisation.

 

Laura asks if she has any other responsibilities. Flora says she dropped them all and has found her calling in the JCR.

 

Felix asks if enjoys minutes, she says she enjoys them but no colour coding. She likes recording what people say.

 

Garamond is her favourite font, asked by cameron.

 

Hannah is second candidate. She says she would really like to be a part of it, is quite organised and reliable, has done stuff for entz, goes to all the GMs, likes listening to what’s going on and wants people to be able to access information about the JCR. Likes everyone. Can type quickly, and doesn’t have many time commitments because she has already done exams. Happy to dedicate as much time as necessary. Thinks it would be fun to get involved and help people. Wants people to be able to come and talk to her, which she thinks she would be good at.

 

Monique asks if Hannah has any experience. Hannah says she has no minuting experience, but worked as a PA in an opticians for two years so has done lots of typing and admin stuff. She reads lots of minutes and has read the documents in handover and is confident she should could do it.

 

Favourite font is Halvetica.

 

The candidates leave them room as we move to a vote

 

Monique says they both seem quite good.

Zack says that he has a mild preference for Hannah  because she has no exams.

 

We move to a vote and Hannah is duly elected as secretary

 

Drama Society cooption

We move to Juliet’s cooptions for the Drama Society committee. She says that she would like to increase diversity on the committee by electing an equalities officer, because currently the committee is completely white british and Juliet is the only female. Recent plays such as Four Lions have shown that drama is diversifying, and they would like to be able to continue that, and more people’s views would help with this.

 

Shreya as candidate says drama is really important to her, as is diversity and that people of colour are not marginalised and that a greater diversity of playwrights and directors get to perform in Oxford. The pilch has a good record of non white male plays, both in writership actorship and directorship (especially last term). She thinks she has the skills to continue and improve this and would really love to do it.

 

Everyone murmurs acknowledgement that Shreya would be great.

 

Richard asks how big the subcommittee will be, it will be 7. Juliet says there’s a lot of work and this is a sufficient number for the amount of work.

 

Amrita asks what the equalities officer will do apart from choosing plays.

 

Juliet says that she will be there for guidance to find ways of doing things in relation to the play and improve all aspects of plays.

 

Shreya is duly elected Equalities Officer of the Drama Society.

 

Ball

 

We move to ball business. Juliet points out how close it is and wants to give an update

 

Set up starts wednesday of 2nd, and everything will be up by Saturday morning. Three marquees will be put up on Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday sound and light equipment will be installed. There will be a lot of van movement and people running around. Juliet asks that people respect the equipment because insurance does not cover damage before Saturday AND rehiring a replacement marquee, so ball would be off in event of damage. Asks committee to set the standards for being nice to ball kit.

 

Saturday is the big design day, for example the JCR will be out of order on Saturday and buttery etc. will be essentially uninhabitable. It is yet to be confirmed when students will be kicked out. Asking people to leave rooms is hard, but it does have to happen. Will be clarified soon.

 

When people have left there will be staircase sweeps, would like to ask up to 10 members of committee to do staircase sweeps. The more people there are the later people can be kicked out of rooms. Involves checking each room for people in there. Some people staying on site with permission from Bruce. Those staircases juliet will be sweeping, so that welfare anonymity is protected.

 

Reiterates that people be respectful of equipment.

 

It is decided by Hubert and Juliet that there will be an email asking people to help with staircase sweeps. Juliet asks for questions

 

Leah asks when people will be kicked out of JCR, for pantry plans. Juliet says that she will let her know for sure but thinks it makes sense to still have lunch, clear sofas during and then doing pantry half after lunch. Will be able to open like normal on Sunday.

 

Felix asks when people can go back to rooms. Juliet says that at 2:30 ball attendees will be ushered back to their rooms.

 

Zack asks when people who aren’t attending ball will be allowed back in rooms. Juliet is still talking about this with RQ etc. and nothing is confirmed.

 

Hubert asks about ball elections - Hubert is organising electronic ballots etc. but hustings need to be decided upon - Freddy is asked to run hustings.

 

Open Welfare meeting

 

Laura and Monique talk about the open welfare meeting, which is intended for people in the JCR find out more about how welfare process works to deal with problems of transparency, give suggestions and try and improve welfare. They have had suggestions from OUSU, who suggested that people could submit anonymous questions whilst someone neutral (say Freddy as VP) could chair it.

 

Juliet asks if it would be held after motion for welfare vetting process comes through or before.

 

Alex says that welfare process motion has not been decided upon date wise. It might be at GM this sunday, but will probably be in 3rd week. They weren’t sure whether to clash the motion of no confidence and this motion.

 

Juliet comments that it would be better afterwards because the vetting process should be clear before it is examined.

 

Izzy asks more about the format and Monique says it would be more of a discussion rather than a GM or welfare tea.

 

Hubert asks for logistics to be discussed more, including Freddy in the formatting discussions.

 

Hubert asks Izzy where the class rep is at the moment, Izzy says that there is a motion that may be in by Thursday deadline, but they may take more time.

 

Good Lad Workshops

 

Laura and Monique talk about good lad workshops, have spoken to OUSU about it, have talked with sports reps about it and want them to cover all sport cultures (not just rugby as in the past). Monique says she want to set up workshop slots and get each sports team captain to attend and book a slot with their team. Monique wants advice on how best to make sports captains do that, who to put in charge of the workshops etc.

 

Cameron ask whether good lad workshops are provided by a company and ask whether they’ve been spoken to, Monique clarifies that she hasn’t talked to the relevant company yet, she just wants to figure out the format on the JCR’s side in trying to get sport captains to go. Hubert says that they would attend if just asked and Ali agrees, no formal process is required.

 

Calum reminds to make sure that rugby captain handover doesn’t disrupt it, and that it is not double booked. Rugby team has already attended a workshop this year.

 

Monique suggests that long term repetition of this would be desirable, Hubert suggests this could be standing orders but could probably be done informally.

 

Dani’s Birthday

 

Zack says that it is Dani’s 50th bday and she wants B&Q vocuhers

 

Richard asks why we got Vicky a card because she isn’t an employee. Hubert said it was to build JCR relations.

 

No objections, £22 is passed to get Dani a card and vouchers

 

Recycling

 

Felix talks about recycling, says that all the bins in the rooms are recycling bins, and the ones in the JCR with black bin bags are not but the yellow bins are. He wants to encourage people to use them. Wants to rearrange them so that the recycling bins are more visible, with Koalas and everything. Want to do not so nice pictures on black bins to discourage their use.

 

Alex asks what to do with non recyclables in rooms, says that polystyrenes can’t be put in room bins nor can crockery. So don’t put that or (as Richard reminds) sanitary products in there, you’re supposed to put them in the black bins elsewhere. Want to put signs up so that everyone knows.

 

Josh and Felix are working with the MCR and College on drafting a new Environmental Policy, and are currently making good progress in that process. If anyone has any suggestions for this, do get in touch.

 

Leah says that there should be a food waste bin outside because nobody uses the grey plastic thing so it all ends up in the non recyclable. That would encourage separating the rubbish into packaging and food. There’s some general agreement.

 

Felix reminds that there is a film screening tomorrow night in Bruce’s room, of Wall E with free wine and everything!

 

Domain Name

 

Antonia reminds that she passed money for new server, has now found out that she can just put on oxford servers. But we need a domain name, which is £9

 

Zack reminds that we can just use the old passed money, which was kind of passed for the same purpose.

 

AOB

 

Izzy asks if because of may day can we move forward the GM to earlier.

 

Hubert notes that there are photos so we can’t hold during day

 

Richard notes that there is hall that we work around so a bit earlier wouldn’t work

 

Hubert concludes that we keep it at 19:15.

 

Richard says that the committee voting on no con process seems unfair, and that in this situation there is no reason for committee to have a greater to say than the rest of the JCR, but we can’t change it in time for GM. What should we do, support or reject the motion?

 

Calum suggests that 67% reflects the fact that no conning is a large change so we should have a super majority system.

 

Richard notes that one of the things about this motion specifically is that some sections of the JCR feel that they are underrepresented, so mandating a supermajority would be inappropriate and look awful in terms of actually representing the JCR.

 

It’s generally agreed that this won’t be sorted now so the session is adjourned.