2020 Committee Lunch

Date: 11th March 2020 (2020-03-11)

Attendance

Present: Cerian Richmondjones (President), Rory Dangelo (Vice-President (Administrative)), Emily Passmore (Secretary), Conor Callaghan (Treasurer), Geheris Gidlow (Lindsay), Leyla Manthorperizatepe (Dr. WHO), Leoni Loughlin (Dr. WHO), Andi Marsh (Access and Admissions Officer), Dhruv Sengupta (Affiliations Officer), Leah Fahy (Entz Officer), Shreya Kirpalani (Entz Officer), Michael Beattie (Environment & Ethics Officer), Amelia Wood (Housing Officer), Melisande Prince-Hodges (Women's Officer), Emily Reed (Women's Officer)

Absent with apologies: Madeleine Ross (Foody), Szymon Musial (Foody), Molly Green (Sports Rep), Rocco Huesch (Academic Affairs and Careers Officer), Keren Kassanda (Access and Admissions Officer), Nathalie Spiller (Charities and RAG Officer), Hamzah Mahmood (Ethnic Minorities Officer), Naa Ntodi (Housing Officer), Lauren Shirreff (LGBTQ Officer)

Absent without explanation: Alexander Baxter (Sports Rep), Tryfonia Mitsopoulou (Charities and RAG Officer), Megan Snaith (Environment & Ethics Officer), Hannah Raja (Ethnic Minorities Officer), Anna Brainin (International Students Officer), Mhairi Cadenazzi (International Students Officer), Samuel Myers (LGBTQ Officer), Thomas Falezan (Website & Computing Officer)

Agenda

• Coronavirus 
• Co-opting a Dr WHO
• College’s function as JCR accountant 
• New VP elections 
• Delivery charges

Minutes

Coronavirus 

There was panic in the freshers group chat; we think it was just a moment of panic though, due to lack of information. Someone on the staircase was self-quarantining, and people weren’t told - turns out it was just a cold. People would like to be told stuff like this to stop any mass hysteria, or rumours spreading. 

Also James thinks some of it might be ironic, spread by people who don’t really care. 

Second year lives out, so is less worried, and Andi thinks third year just don’t care. 

Cerian clarifies that C1 in Masters Field is a self isolation centre. It can’t be accessed from Jowett. If anyone is worried, talk to the dean. 

(Also I’m editing these from quarantine and we really didn’t know what was coming)

Co-opting a Dr WHO

Meg and Alice are running to be Dr WHO. We need one new Dr WHO to work with Leyla.

Cerian asks what they think the role entails, and what they want to do with it 

Alice - you manage welfare subcommittees, organise welfare measures such as restocking condoms and liaise with the su. She’s interested because she wants to be someone who people can go to for info, she’s passionate about welfare and wants to combat attitudes around sexual assault, focusing on promoting bystander training. 

Meg - you’re head of welfare subcommittee, she’s interacted with welfare system since coming to uni so knows how it works. She wants to reassure people worried about coming to uni and has heard some good ideas from other colleges that might be good to try out here. She also wants to make sure everyone knows what rustication actually is - it’s scary to see it pop up on Oxfess. She wants to make sure that welfare reaches as many people as possible. 

Rory asks how they’d make welfare visible in freshers week, beyond the existing workshops and emotional resilience talk 

Meg - she wants to try and get things in place before freshers arrive through asking for info before e.g. like system of contacting college parents 

Alice - she wants to include small meetings between freshers and people who can help with welfare to reduce anxiety about asking for help 

Rory asks how they’d make welfare visible at bops and in the bar 

Meg - she likes Leyla’s idea of having specific people stay sober at bops, identified on the post announcing the bop, who people can talk to if needed, she would also like to make the angel shot, where people can ask the bartender for help, more prominent 

Alice - she’d also like to make angel shots more prominent, she thinks people should be at events consistently as someone to talk to to make sure people are comfortable coming to them, she’d also introduce a safe word if people needed help, and try to have a safe space people can go to at bops

Leyla asks how they’d reach people who are less visible e.g. people who don’t have time to go to welfare events and mainly just stay in their room 

Meg - she’d try to empower people’s friends and coursemates to anonymously signpost any concerns, helped through providing information in freshers week on how to spot the signs of potential welfare issues 

Alice - she’d also try to make sure people know what warning signs to look out for and make this a thing in freshers week, and thinks people are most likely to know what is going on on their own staircases, 

Meg and Alice leave. The committee discusses and a vote is taken. 

Meg is elected. 

JCR accountant

Denise has now retired, and the bursary is now fulfilling her role whilst we continue to look for a replacement. 

This means the payroll for students will change. College pays their staff monthly, the jcr usually pays students weekly. Conor spoke to the bursary, they don’t want to set up a separate weekly payroll; it would create a lot of admin because of the differences in working hours from week to week 

They want to pay people monthly by taking it off battels, or through a bank transfer. Conor asks if people would be unhappy with this. 

He thinks the only real issue would be if people have cash flow issues - otherwise this is a fairly reasonable inconvenience considering the alternatives. 

Dhruv asks if there could be a system of prepayment if people always work the same shift at the same time. 

This would only really work for the bar, pantry doesn’t work this way. But people don’t always turn up for bar shifts. 

The general consensus is that people will be less happy, but nobody will properly boycott the system. 

Conor says reimbursements will work the same as before. 

Conor asks if anyone is dependent on wages being paid weekly. However, this is not really the idea of student work - bursaries are meant to cover living expenses. Some people may be missed by this system, and finances can be complicated though. But people should really go to Bruce if they can’t get by without working. 

Andi thinks we should make it clear in the announcement of this new system that if anyone has any issues without getting weekly payments, they should go to Bruce. Rory adds that college does no-interest loans for short-term cash flow problems. 

Leah thinks that it might make some people less comfortable day-to-day, but they’ll still be able to live normally and can get money twice or three times a term. 

Conor says most people pick up their wages once a term anyway. 

He’ll announce the new system this afternoon. 

Bop shifts will also be paid this way. 

Thomas Laver’s VP

The new VP will be elected tomorrow in the jcr at 6pm. It’s compulsory for committee to attend!! (note: a lot of people listened to this, not everyone tho) 

Tampon avalanche

The women’s reps were thinking of holding the tampon avalanche tomorrow too. But people might feel uncomfortable coming if it’s held in the jcr at the same time as the election. It might be better to hold it somewhere on Friday.

Delivery charges 

Michael is on the college sustainability working group, including the master and the domestic bursar. This follows from the climate action plan motion passed last term. 

There will soon be an audit on the college’s baseline carbon emissions. This will include some grey areas - is college responsible for emissions from student flights to and from home for example? It’s complicated. It should be done by June (note - lol maybe not, there’s now a pandemic), and by Michaelmas we should be able to set a proper net zero target. 

Fran, the domestic bursar wants to get started on moving towards this target as soon as possible. If anyone has any idea for college-wide policies to reduce our carbon footprint, tell Michael. 

One of Fran’s ideas is to try and reduce the number of deliveries to college through a charge per delivery or a ban on certain deliveries. Amazon comes to college five times a day. This is also a concern for the city council - the fastest growing carbon issue issue in central Oxford is deliveries to colleges. 

Michael asks what people think about a parcel charge. 

Andi asks how much it would be. Would it change depending on size, or if the packaging was cardboard instead of plastic? 

Michael thinks the main aim is to reduce the number of deliveries, not to cut down on waste. 

Someone asks if a charge would really stop people ordering online; it might still be easier than actually going to the shops. However, there will need to be some uncomfortable changes to our lifestyles in order to cut carbon emissions. 

The effect will depend on what the charge is and therefore who it affects. Some can easily afford an extra charge, but it will make life harder for others. Could it be possible to not charge for necessities? But this would mean disclosing what is being delivered. Would it be possible to have a fast fashion charge? 

There could also be a quota, and charges start once you exceed that quota. 

Someone asks where the money from the charge would go. It might be easier to sell the charge if the money went towards an environmentally focused fund. 

Michael says Fran has also suggested just getting an amazon locker in the jcr. Then deliveries would only be once a day, and the pidge room wouldn’t be so crowded. But would this count as advertising in the jcr - they only do branded lockers. 

Someone says that even if the charge doesn’t cut down on deliveries, we’d still make money, which could go towards environmental protection. 

Rory says the charge could make people who usually don’t think about how much they order reconsider. He asks if there could be exceptions for textbooks or books for classes. Michael said Fran mentioned that Blackwells do price matching, so we could order from there instead. Rory and Andi say they don’t have everything though e.g. classics, obscure poetry. It might still be good to get a deal with them though, or with waterstones etc. that could get us a discount as well. 

Leah thinks having a quota would be a good idea. People do need to order some things, but some deliveries aren’t essential and it would make people think twice about these and factor the delivery into their calculations. 

If there was to be a charge, we’d want it to be small enough that it wouldn’t affect anyone’s actual budget. But if it was absolutely tiny, it wouldn’t really have much of an impact. 

Someone asks how big the quota would be - entz need to order a lot of things for example, some people get medical things delivered, people get things sent from their parents, especially international students who may be homesick. 

Cerian and Rory have a meeting, so the discussion is delayed until next term.