2014 General Meeting

By admin, 30 March, 2022
Date of Meeting

    2014 General Meeting

    Date: Sunday 7th week, Hilary 2014 (2014-03-02)

    Agenda


    1. Women's Officer Motion [Claudia Freemantle and Izzy Williams]
    2. Sports Rep Motion [Richard May and Isaac Rose]
    3. Charity Money Division [Aisha Simon and Henry Wisbey-Broom]
    4. Levies [Max Dalton]
    5. Music Funding [Illias Thoms and Alex Mckenzie]
    6. Trial Investment [Rivka Micklethwaite]
    7. Clean Up Cruelty [Orla Oakey]
    8. Exeter Hall Boycott [David Bagg and Xavier Cohen]

    Minutes


    1. 1. Women’s Officer Motion [Claudia Freemantle and Isabel Williams]
      • The point of this motion was to codify, not change, the Women's Officer role. CF said that she wanted the constitution to include the welfare aspect of the role as well as the political. CF confirmed that women’s officers can be responsible for non-gendered welfare, but that they are the main people in charge of Women’s sexual welfare. CF confirmed that DR WHOs cannot currently provide the morning after pill. There was no opposition to the motion and it passed.
    2. Sports Rep Motion [Richard May and Isaac Rose]
      • RM and IR think that sports rep should be on committee. SB confirmed that sports rep don’t have a budget. AB asked if there was any guarantee the sports rep would actually turn up to committee. AH asked AL a short factual question: does he want to be on committee? To which the answer was “not really”. AB asked what it would achieve to have sports rep on committee. RM said accountability and responsibility, and that people as sports rep tended not to be “committee people”, the motion would bring a different set of people and opinions to committee. AL said that sports reps were unlikely to bring anything to the table in committee lunch, so unless they were to redefine the role it would be essentially pointless. AB said that sports reps have “nothing to do with the JCR” and it was not clear “what sports reps do for us at all”. TW said that people might be discouraged from running from sports reps if they knew they had to be on committee.
      • DB said that though he had argued against a larger committee, he supported this motion because sports reps were used to going to sports committee and talking about budgets and health and safety issues. DB went through all the important decisions that sports committee made, and said that it would sensible to have someone to facilitate two-way feedback between sports committee and the main committee. AS said that the motion was proposing a fairly subjective view, and she thought that the sports rep was currently a “jovial role” in the JCR and that it would be a shame to stamp an official role on everything. OJM said that he thought it was important for sports to be transparent.
      • HS militated against the superior or patronising view that sports people were too lazy to turn up to main committee. AH said it was patronising to say sports rep could only be accountable if they were on committee because they could always talk to people and come to GMs. Also the idea that sports reps would bring different views to committee was a bad one because in fact the motion might change the type of people or the reasons that people apply for sports reps. Sean Wyer asked what the differences would bring to the role – it seemed unclear. IR made a summary speech in proposition: making sure a substantial amount of what members of the JCR is brought to committee, and that it would raise the status of sport. IR clarified that the motion would only come into being next year. The motion failed.
    3. Charity Money Division [Aisha Simon and Henry Wisbey-Broom]
      • DT said there had been an amendment to the motion to raise the amount of money going to each charity. MD said that the Against Malaria Foundation had two nominations and asked why they had decided not to give more money to them. AS said that she didn’t want to create a kind of waging/conflicting atmosphere. DB pointed out that one of the organisations was not a charity. AB said that the constitution set out fairly firmly what a charity was and that Imperial University would not be one of these. This organisation was struck from the motion, and the amounts of money going to the other five charities raised proportionately. The motion passed.
    4. Levies [Max Dalton]
      • MD said that he wanted to reduce levies to be in line with actual spending. DB proposed an amendment to cut the part of the motion which increased compulsory levies by 9p. DB said that being a member of this JCR is a significant cost as a student. MD said he would like to debate this amendment because the compulsory tampax levy would be reduced by 9p so the overall levy would not be increased. DT invited points of debate on raising the general levy to 9p. DB pointed out that there was no actual reason to increase the general levy – i.e. we had nothing to spend it on. JS asked what the general compulsory levy was spent on. MD said running pantry, some to welfare etc. OJM asked why lowering the tampax fund meant we had to increase the general levy. The amendment passed.
      • AB confirmed that the new levy forms would give us the option of opting out of 1p levies. HE asked if it would not be easier to ask people not to vote for levies. MD said that that would encourage the view that levies were bad, which was a dangerous precedent to set. DB asked on what basis MD had created different levels of increase. MD explained that it was in line with the amount of money coming in, and the amount of money expected to go out. HE asked if more people would pay levies if they were at a lower level. MD agreed and also said that if people didn’t think levies were overfunded they would be more likely to pay for them. The motion passed.
    5. Music Funding [Illias Thoms and Alex Mckenzie]
      • Illias explained that Choir tour are going on tour, funded by Doug and Drummond as well as choir. He explained that there is ÂŁ750 deposit shortfall, and that we would like this money to come from the Music Maestro fund. Illias confirmed that he would not ask Choir to pay for more money. Rose confirmed that the rest of choir had paid the right amount. Illias confirmed that the Music Fund had not been spent since 2008.
      • CF asked why it had come to GM and llias confirmed that AM could have just spent his money. Tom Wainford said that because it was a limited number of the JCR it would not be fair to ask everyone to pay. AB said that he thought ÂŁ750 was quite a lot of money to give in a large amount, although he seemed conflicted by the idea that he was asking for Illias and GW to pay. CF pointed out that choir had committee to the trip thinking that it was less than it was. She also pointed out that we’ve been to London and Durham for the 750 years anniversary, and would be representing the College.
      • AM confirmed that the money was not competing to be spent on anything else, and that he might at most spend another ÂŁ500 of the fund. SW pointed out that choir was already spending more money than it had on the last tour. MD confirmed that it would be difficult to pull back the music from the fund and to put it elsewhere because it had been put in there by the levies. AH said that it wasn’t the JCRs fault that the choir had committed to a lesser amount. AH also pointed out that she didn’t feel that she had benefitted from the choir singing in the chapel. AB said that making comparisons between the choir and the sports was difficult because the chapel is separate to the JCR and also consisted of members of the MCR too. JS said that it would be nice for members to be able to go on tour without parental support.
      • DBL asked if Music Maestro would not spend the money if it didn’t pass – and he said no. GW pointed out that different funds benefit different members of the JCR – so even if AM were to buy music equipment that would not benefit anyone and would apparently be less controversial. ML militated against the argument that the existence of money means that we should spend it. SW asked to move to a vote. We did.
      • Illias summed up that this was a fund that people had paid money into for music that has not been spent. We are asking for ÂŁ750 leaving ÂŁ4000 which we can’t see how to spend, and that choir have been working hard. Hannah said that this wasn’t necessary what the fund was for. The motion passed.
    6. Trial Investment [Riva Micklethwaite]
      • RM said that last term the JCR voted to pass a divestment motion saying that we would support the OUSU divestment campaign which lobbied the University to move funds away from fossil fuel companies that aren’t searching for new energy reserves. RM said that she would like to have a small amount of Balliol’s money put into a trial investment in a fund that fitted our ethical investment criteria. IT asked if there was a situation whereby the JCR decided that they liked a certain fund but that College ignored us. RM clarified that the motion mandated herself and XC to find another fund that college could use and would be a gesture of support rather than binding college to anything. RM does not know the exact amount that would be given. There was no opposition to the motion. The motion passed.
    7. Clean Up Cruelty [Orla Oakey]
      • OO said that this was a motion that was going around the University and had just passed at Mansfield College. The motion was to replenish our cleaning products with ones not tested on animals. OO said that the extra cost was negligible, and clarified that the motion was opening up debate with College rather than guaranteeing an outcome. DB asked if OO wanted to include cleaning products that had once used animal testing. OO said that she wanted to support companies endorsed by the Leaping Bunny which was an external organisation which had certain criteria for ethical companies. There was no opposition. The motion passed.
    8. Exeter Hall Boycott [David Bagg and Xavier Cohen]
      • This motion brought a beautiful solidarity between Xavier Cohen and David Bagg. DB said that Exeter have a very high compulsory catering charge. Exeter are boycotting their Hall to make the point that it is too high and that it puts off applicants from low-income backgrounds. DB thinks that we should pass ÂŁ50 out of the Political Fund to help pay for ingredients for Exeter students to cook for themselves. DB said it didn’t look like the campaign would reach a resolution this term. DB said that Wadham, Corpus and Merton have passed motions in solidarity but that no one else has given money. DB said it was important to build on links between JCRs.
      • AP proposed an amendment to strike part 6 – i.e. the part where we give money. AP argued that previous history of JCR solidarity did not seem to include financial help. AP pointed out that we were already helping Exeter by giving them discounted price for Hall and letting them use Pantry. DB said that if people use our Pantry then we’re better off, it wasn’t a large amount of money, and was an appropriate use of the Political Campaign. IR, whilst a tad tipsy, advocated the importance of “putting your money where your mouth is” – so that it would be fairly useless to give verbal but no financial support. AB said that it was part of Balliol to actually do things rather than just say things. JS pointed out that the ÂŁ50 was a finite amount.
      • OJM said that a College that can boycott its own Hall can surely raise ÂŁ50. DB explained that it was dubiously legal for Exeter JCR to spend money on things that don’t support the aims of Exeter. Because Balliol JCR is separate, and not constrained legally, we are much more able to give the money. The amendment failed. The motion passed unopposed.