2020 General Meeting

Date: 6th November 2020 (2020-11-06)

Agenda

Presidential hustings

Minutes

Emma asks if the website could be updated. 

Shreya says yes, definitely. She has a housemate who’s interested in being web officer, and they’ve been looking into it together. She thinks the last website update was in 2015; she’d be willing to put funds towards updating the website, and pay someone a living wage to do web design for us. 

Emma asks if Shreya has any plans for the charity musical. 

Shreya says she’d love for the charity musical to go ahead. She knows there are currently government rules saying you can only hold plays and not musicals, hopefully this will change by Hillary. If it doesn’t, we could push it into Trinity, or we could film it without an audience. She asks Emma if there’s anything she wants to do with the musical as a&b president. 

Emma asks about how far the charity musical should be affiliated with the jcr, and how far with a&b. 

Shreya says the principal connection between the musical and the jcr is because it only involves balliol undergrads. There should be welfare checks in place, as we’re ticketing to balliol students only so the jcr holds some responsibility. She also thinks a strong connection helps get people involved, and lets us work with the lindsay bar for the event. 

Leah asks what the biggest thing Shreya wants to achieve is. 

Shreya says the first big get together of the balliol community since the start of term, and the start of the pandemic, was the bonfire night. She wants to hold onto these community events, as covid will affect this whole year and we need to work around it. She wants firstly to make life better for people with covid, and secondly to push for more events and redirect money towards welfare measures such as packages or activities for households. As entz, she knows it can feel impossible to adapt to the pandemic, but now everyone’s back in Oxford, we can readjust and find ways to adapt, for example through the charity musical and bonfire night. Also, she wants to work closely with the equality and diversity commission set up last term and work to build a stronger BME community within Balliol. 

Cerian asks what Shreya’s idea of the role is, how much time she thinks she’ll have to commit to it, and how she’ll manage the college side of the role. 

Shreya says she thinks there’s two sides to the role. Firstly, the college facing role, involving meeting with the master, maintaining relations with college staff, being the face of the jcr community. Secondly, the role within the jcr, making sure jcr funds are in a good position, building a good committee and dealing with any issues from committee; this is particularly important this year, as freshers have had less interaction with the jcr. She wants to be a guiding force for freshers on committee, alongside any other second years on committee, explaining how things typically work. In terms of time commitments, she’s a second year historian, so can say with confidence she’ll have the time. 

Shreya says she also wants to set up a covid committee to give a student voice in college responses to the pandemic. 

Harry asks what Shreya will do about Oxford’s boa constrictor problem (and then very suspiciously retracts the question)

Shreya answers anyway; we’ll be fine, we have gates and porters. She clarifies this doesn’t mean sacrificing Alain. 

Emma says that last year there were plans to set up a sexual harassment committee in college, because the current guidance is to go to the police or do nothing. She asks if Shreya has any plans for this. 

Shreya says she’d love to set up a committee for this and open up the conversation. It might be the best time to deal with the problem as there are less events and things to manage. She’d want to work with past committees on the issue, as she doesn’t know the full history of the issue at Balliol, but wants to make clear this is something she’s passionate about tackling as it’s incredibly serious. She wants to open up the conversation on welfare, and get more concrete changes in place. 

Cerian says she promised to tackle the issues, but didn’t due to handling the finances and the pandemic. She’s willing to take point in Hillary on the issue. 

Shreya says this is another reason she’d want a very comprehensive handover between committees. 

Cerian asks if anybody else has any questions or opinions. 

Gwen, Leah, Harry and Linus all say they think Shreya would be a fantastic president. :) 

Shreya asks everybody not to RON her.