2016 General Meeting

Date: Sunday 1st week, Hilary 2016 (2016-01-17)

Agenda

Hilary Term, 1st Week GM

a) Matters Arising

 

1. JdeB: Second hearing [Oli J-M]

This JCR Notes:

1. The JdeBs are currently on Committee.
2. Committee currently contains 35 people.
3. The Undergraduate population is listed as 377 on Balliol’s section of the Oxford Uni Website.
4. A lot of people in that 377 have next to no interaction with the JCR as a political and social entity.
5. The resulting percentage of people who are active in the JCR who are then also on committee is likely between 15-20%.
6. I only took Maths to GCSE.
7. If I wanted to put up a nasty poster up outside the JCR calling Duncan smelly I could, regardless of whether or not I was on Committee.
8. The only time I turned up to Committee Lunch was to blindly vote for my friends in a co-option I knew nothing about.
9. They lost.

This JCR Believes:

1. Committee is important.
2. The JdeBs are not that important.
3. Committee members all have extra voting powers at Committee Lunch.
4. The JCR gives the JdeB a mandate to write a magazine, not to have extra decision making powers.
5. All welfare obligations could be just as easily met without the JdeBs being on Committee.
6. Accountability is not increased by being on Committee.
7. In a thing called love.

This JCR Resolves:

1. To remove the JdeBs from Committee.
2. To amend the Constitution and the Standing Orders in accordance with the above.
3. To listen to the rhythm of my heart.

 

b) Passage of motions without discussion

 

c) Amendments to the Constitution

 

 

2. Change of DSO name: First hearing [Molly Rogers]

 

This JCR Notes:

1. According to the equality act of 2010, a disability is any physical or mentail impairment that has a substantial and long-term negative effect on one’s ability to carry out normal daily activities.
2. People can choose whether or not they self-identify as disabled, and therefore a person may have a disability but not identify as disabled.
3. There is currently a role on the JCR Committee and Welfare Subcommittee called Disabled Students’ Officer whose duty it is to assist, inform, and represent Balliol’s students with disabilities.

This JCR Believes:

1. The label ‘disabled’ may be off-putting or exclusionary and this may deter people from seeking advice from the Disabled Students’ Officer.
2. The term ‘Students With Disabilities’ is more inclusive than ‘Disabled Students’, as it encompasses anyone who suffers from an illness or impairment which classes as a disability, regardless of whether or not they view themselves as disabled.

This JCR Resolves:

1. To change the name of the role currently known as ‘Disabled Students’ Officer’ (or ‘DSO’) to ‘Student Disabilities Officer’ (or ‘SDO’), and to update the JCR Constitution and Standing Orders accordingly.

 

d) Amendments to the Standing Orders

 

e) Main Agenda

3.     Sign Language Class [Molly Rogers]

        This JCR Notes:

1. Hearing impairment affects one in six people in the UK.
2. This statistic is rising with an estimated increase to one in five people by the year 2035.
3. 24,000 people across the UK use sign language as their main language – although this is likely to be an underestimate.
4. British Sign Language (BSL) has been acknowledged as a minority language in the UK since 2003.
5. The majority of people without hearing impairments do not know or understand BSL making it very difficult for them to communicate with those for whom BSL is their first language.
6. We have an opportunity to run language classes for members of Balliol JCR. There are two options available: a course of sign language for beginners comprising of 6+ sessions OR a basic deaf awareness course including basic sign language comprising of 2 1-hour sessions.
7. The cost of a deaf awareness course is £150 whereas the cost of the longer sign language course is proportionately higher.

This JCR Believes:

1. It is great to be able to communicate with everyone, regardless of any disability the may have.
2. There is demand among Balliol students for BSL classes.
3. The shorter (2 hour) deaf awareness course is more appropriate to the JCR’s needs as many people cannot commit to more than 2 hours. If, following the ccompletion of the deaf awareness course there is still demand for further sign language classes, we can consider the possibility of running more sessions in the future.

This JCR Resolves:

1. To pass £150 to fund two hours of sign language and deaf awareness workshop for the JCR.
2. To operate the classes on a first come first served basis, and to offer any spaces unfilled by Balliol students to other members of the university.

4. International Students and Ethnic Minorities Officers [Nicky Halterman]

This JCR Notes:

1. That the current standing policy section titled ‘Ethnic Minorities and Overseas’ ‘Believes 2.’ currently reads ‘These students would be adequately represented by a single officership, and having four people representing these two overlapping groups is unnecessary’.
2. That this JCR has previously resolved to split the office of Ethnic Minorities and Overseas students into two separate offices.
3. This JCR has already elected four people total two these two respective offices.

 

This JCR Believes:

1. That the current standing policy should be amended to match the current JCR constitution and practice.

 

This JCR Resolves:

1. To strike ‘Believes 2.’ of the Ethnic Minorities and Overseas students section of the standing policy.
2. To replace ‘Believes 2.’ with ‘Ethnic Minorities and Overseas students should each be represented by their own dedicated officership, as a combined officership is insufficient to represent the differing concerns of both groups’.

5.   Administrative Failure [Ste Rose]

       This JCR Notes:

1. The standing policy item ‘Administrative Failure’.
2. That this item lacks any sort of context.
3. That this item could in fact be a tweet.
4. That our current secretary is likely to cock up on more than a few occasions.
5. That our current secretary took two attempts to draft this particular agenda properly, and in advertising the GM sent two emails and one Facebook message, when all that was really required was one email.

This JCR Believes:

1. That ‘public humiliation’ is incredibly strong language.
2. That it’s not particularly clear what sort of response exactly this item is advocating, nor indeed the sort of administrative failure to which it’s advocating responding.
3. That in responding to administrative failure, one should take into consideration the context in which the failure was made, regarding personal circumstances, administrative difficulties (e.g. how much of a total pain it is to create tiered lists in Word), and other external factors, and hence an item of Standing Policy is necessarily too narrow in scope to encompass how administrative failure should be responded to (and if not, a tweet-able item of Standing Policy definitely is).
4. That we like our adorable new secretary and don’t want to publicly humiliate him when he inevitably cocks up again.

This JCR Resolves:

1. To strike the item of Standing Policy titled ‘Administrative Failure’.

Amendment [Cealach] accepted as friendly

Replace all instances of the phrase 'cock(s) up' with "make(s) a mistake".

 

Minutes

Annie welcomed the JCR to the first GM.

 

1.Oli explained that the JdeBs have no responsibilities that cannot be satisfied without a committee presence. He explained that Darryl had raised that the Constitution provides no means of removing non-committee officers. Oli agreed that this was a flaw, but rather one within the system as it is currently, not his motion.

Molly asked if we could effect a change to provide for removing non-committee officers, Oli answered that he's not sure.

Tom put forward the procedural motion to delay the motion until we've amended the Constitution to contain such a provision.

Oli explained that he thinks that since the motion only applies after 'Lewis and... the other one' (whom he then identified as Simon) finish their office, the constitutional change can take effect before the motion comes into effect even if it is passed today.

It was asked whether the motion would apply to Lewis and Simon's office, which Oli replied that it would.

The procedural motion was voted on and fell.

There was a move to a vote on the motion.

Motion passes.

 

 

2. Molly introduced her motion by explaining that the name 'DSO' should be changed as she fears that people with disabilities who don't identify as disabled may be deterred from seeking her help, and that she feels 'SDO' would be a lot more inclusive.

The motion passes without opposition.

 

 

3. Molly explained that a lot of people in the JCR have expressed an interest in learning sign language. She has been talking to a tutor who has agreed to come into the JCR to teach sign language to about twenty people at the cost of £150, and that 'we have the money, so why not spend it.' She reiterated that we could – if demand was lower than anticipated (which she felt was unlikely) – offer places to other students outside of college in exchange for donations. She explained that there were two options: the two one-hour sessions or the six week course, however she feels that this would see low demand, due to the time commitment.

Tom asked what the content of the 'deaf awareness' course was, and also where the donations from non-JCR members were go. Molly explained that it involved things like 'fact based activities' and 'mini activities', however she was not entirely sure what the content was. She explained she didn't know, but that it would probably supplement the JCRs expenditure.

A move to a vote was called.

Motion passes.

 

 

4. Nicky explained that his motion was 'just bookkeeping' in that the standing policy directly contradicts our current practice and that the motion simply corrects this.

The motion passed without opposition.

 

 

5. Ste said that he thought that this item of Standing Policy is excessively harsh. He said that he thought we should get rid of it.

Tom Posa asked what exactly the wording of this item is. Darryl read it out. Tom asked if Ste thought that we should have a mechanism that removes JCR officers who do fail. Ste said that he thought this mechanism should be in the Constitution.

Xav asked if anyone has ever been publicly humiliated in the JCR before. Ste said he didn't know.

Tom asked what public humiliation meant in this context. Ste said he didn't know.

We moved to debate.

Tom asked if Ste would be introducing a constitutional amendment to put in place a mechanism to deal with administrative failure.

Ste said that he hadn't considered what such an amendment would say, but he was in favour of discussing this with the JCR.

Cealach brought a motion to re word 'cock up' to something more appropriate. This amendment passed.

Oli asked if there was room for comedy in our written documentation as a JCR, noting that he thought that this particular item of Standing Policy would still be up for removal regardless of whether we decided that the Standing Policy is a place for comedy, on the grounds that it’s not actually funny.

Xav said that he didn't think that this point was relevant here, because this piece of policy isn't funny, it is mean; Oli agreed.

We moved to a vote and the motion passed.