Exec Meeting 2018.10.11
Present: AK (President), EMo (Sports & Socs), SM (Comms Officer), JG (Facilities), AB (Treasurer), EB (Librarian), EM (VP), EP (Outreach), MM (Social Chair, EC (Chair), JB (International Rep)
Apologies: EP has to leave half way through for interviews, AB has to leave part way through for compulsory Rugby training, LM (welfare thing),
Setting: Conference room. Yet again before a social- the Rainbow Frep social- and some have put more effort into their colourful outfits than others. AK is a little grumpy at mild lateness.
Agenda
1) apologies and approval of last meeting minutes
2) dealing with S&S who have opt-outs
3) opt-in strategy evaluation
4) accommodation fees
5) AOB
Last meetings minutes approved
Dealing with Sports and Socs Opt-Outs (AK)
What is the sanction for not opting in when people want to join sports and societies. For example, if a club allows people to take part who hasn’t opted in. So, we need a sanction for if clubs/teams do let people who shouldn’t play for them.
Half the team’s budget? If we are doing something with budgets then it has to be specific.
Dock £157.50? – the amount the levy is.
What about clubs who don’t have budgets? We could stop them from having meetings in college and using our facilities. For example, Drama not being able to book out the hall
What if they don’t use any of our facilities and we don’t give them any money? What can we do? Not a lot.
If it were to happen, it would most likely be rowing, football and rugby or maybe darts as people want to want to play something but are too cool for the JCR. So £157.50 is fair.
What about Art Soc? People just turn up. Do they need a list to make sure everyone there has opted in? Yes.
What about docking a percentage of the clubs funding between £52.50 and £157.50
How does 20% sound?
There are some societies where if we docked 20% it wouldn’t be within that bracket. Choir, Cracas, Gardening, Frisbee and Rounders, if we took 20% of their budget, it wouldn’t be £52.50 (AB)
Darts, Cricket, Film Soc and Women’s Football, it would come close to £52.50 if we docked 20%
Agreed on them the sport or soc not being able to use our facilities and then a docking of their budget by 20% capped between £52.50 minimum and £157.50 maximum.
ACTION POINT: AK to write a motion that Sports and Societies need to register who turns up- even if it varies week to week- like Femsoc for example, so that we know if those people who may attending have opted-in based on our lists.
Opt-in Strategy Evaluation (AK)
How do we feel last week went with regards to getting fresh to opt in? We are at 91% at the moment, which also excludes Erasmus, and foundation students. So pretty happy.
How could we do it better next year? Have more laptops so more people can be checking whether people had opt in and then helping them opt in there and then on those laptops. Because there were lines for people doing that at Bailey.
Flag that people need to be enrolled to opt-in.
Have a screen-by-screen instruction sheet for people to follow as lots of people thought they had done it right but hadn’t.
MM would like there to be clearer plan for Erasmus and postgrad students. This was a bit tricky because Erasmus students have to pay straight into our account as the official website only has an option for them to pay the whole three years – which obviously they don’t want to do because they are here for one year.
Sports and Societies – EC and EMo have gone through every single sign up sheet from the Fresher’s Fair to make sure that everyone who has signed up to things have also opted in. It would be a little better if they were all typed next year. But wouldn’t make THAT much difference because you still need to look everyone up individually. AB is going to do some fancy programming thing to make the comparing of these lists easier. EC and EMo seem pretty happy with this even though they don’t really get what is said.
Next year have more than one person who is able to access the optional college charges website- maybe President, Vice-President and Treasurer.
Obviously, it would have been better to have an official Postgrad Rep so hopefully we have one of them next freshers week
ACTION POINT: AK is going to create a handover document for opting in with all of our strategies and what went well and what would we change.
ACTION POINT: AB to make fancy programming thing.
Accommodation Fees (AK)
University is increasing the accommodation fees again by 3.3% based on inflation rates – which is the highest rate they could have picked.
They were meant to announce it on Monday so that Presidents could talk to their execs about how they wanted to handle the situation but then they just announced it.
No one is happy with the University at the moment. ☹
There is a Ripped Off event happening next Thursday. Are we okay with AK sharing this post? Yes.
Point of information from EC – we voted in a JCR meeting last year that we supported the Ripped Off campaign. We could vote on supporting them again in the next meeting. Yeah, no harm.
ACTION POINT: EC will write a motion for the next meeting
GW (SU Pres) did SM’s Job because he posted on the group and it’s her job to represent us in the SU and she’s annoyed by it.
ACTION POINT: We will remove him from the group
Everyone wants the minutes to show that they are not happy with the university right now.
AOB
4 Year Opt-in change (AB)
So, at the moment, people who are on 4 year courses pay the same levy as those who are here for 3 years. This is fine for people who go on a year abroad because they don’t use our facilities when they are away. But it’s not fair on people who do Masters that weren’t initially planned have to pay another levy when they come back. So at the moment, people on integrated masters are getting a year free from us.
Can we find out how many people actually
Changing this is going to have to be passed in a JCR meeting which will draw attention to it and people might kick up a fuss because they were told that they paid for their whole undergrad in their first year, even if they were on a 4 year course.
ACTION POINT: AK is going to find out how many people do separate undergrad degrees then separate masters in Cuth’s.
It’s hard because people often change whether they are on a 3 or 4 year course.
Agreed that we are leaving things as it is, but once we get a list of how many returners there are in Cuth’s, we don’t want them to have to pay. This would come into effect next year because some returners have already payed the JCR Levy for their 4th year that is this year.
If there were very few returners, a refunding them might be possible.
SU Committee (SM)
At the moment the SU committee has; President, Vice-President, Communications Officer, 3 SU committee reps and minority reps. SM was considering whether we should also have a PG rep on it and/or an international rep.
There is meant to be a specific PG SU rep, but this has gone unfilled so often that it’s kind of been forgotten about. So, if it’s unfilled, then the PG rep should go in their place.
JB is welcome to come ex-officio if there are any international matters.
ACTION POINT: EC and SM will talk.
Housing Talk (SM and AK)
Need to change the date of this so that we can go to the Hatfield Inter-Exec formal. Exec do so much so it’s kind of important for us to have fun and also it is good for people to know other people in their roles in other colleges.
So, we think we are going to change it to the 9th November (Friday).
Last year it was absolutely rammed in the hall so no chance of doing it in the bar.
Last year people were really keen so we don’t think changing it from a Tuesday to a Friday will change turn out too much.
There are some things SM needs from us. EB and LM are going to add in a bit about taking a year abroad and how that impacts their living conditions.
SM wants some profiles from all of us about our housing situations and what we would do
ACTION POINT: Everyone will have sent SM information/ a profile by the end of October.
ACTION POINT: SM will tell us exactly what she wants
ACTION POINT: AK to talk to J? about changing the date
ACTION POINT: EM to change the cover photo on the fb groups and send it to AK with revised dates
Do we have a housing database anymore? No. No one used it. And landlords got eggy.
Michaelmas Ball Tickets impacted by Opt-in? (MM)
We can’t control who is can buy the tickets using Fixr, but we do have a list of names after people buy them from us. If people aren’t part of the JCR/ haven’t opted in then they can’t come to Michaelmas Ball.
What do we do if someone who hasn’t opted in buy a ticket, we tell them they can’t come, and then and then we have a ticket to resell. What the fairest way to resell that ticket? Especially considering how popular it is.
Maybe a waiting list system? Fixr doesn’t have that, but could it? Don’t know.
ACTION POINT: MM is going to call Fixr to see if having a waiting list is possible
Projector (AK)
They cost between £300 and £400 according to JoB (Bar Steward).
At the moment we keep needing to borrow one from college and it’s a real faff because we have to sign it out of college and then the porters have to help set it up even though we are capable of it.
John Snow broke the old projector at that social- but that was another projector.
Film soc would use it, as would karaoke and we’d use it for things like consent workshops.
We wouldn’t hire it out to Sports and Socs, we’d give it for free but they would have to pay for things getting missing. So, we should have a list. Very tricky because things go missing all the time and it’s hard to keep track.
We would also have to get a screen as well.
Everyone is onboard with a projector.
Meeting ends!