Quiet Pelican People

Hey!

So for some reason 6th week has been a surprisingly quiet one for the JCR (though it looks like 7th is going to be as busy as ever). I started of the week attending a pretty awesome President’s Seminar from a former Corpuscle working in public policy at Google. Keep an eye out for these seminars as this was my first one and have only just realised you can get a free meal if you go!!

Other than that bit of excitement, I have been organizing the next Corpus Converses. This one will prove to be smaller than ones in the past due to us being bang in the middle of exam period but I’m sure it will be an interesting discussion on the impact of rising tuition fees. Some SCR members should also be attending so that questions and queries can be shared between the two common rooms. It’s on Thursday 8th from 1-2.30pm.

On top of this, I attended a President’s Committee at Oriel on Wednesday. Points of discussion were which colleges had communal kitchen spaces in college for all students to use. This sparked an idea to see whether it was possible to provide a microwave in the JCR for all those who live out to use – I am waiting to hear back on whether this can happen. I have also asked our JCR Accommodation Officer whether we have going ahead with the vacation storage and hopefully this will be being looked into towards the end of term. What also came up in the meeting was a question of whether colleges rent out graduation gowns to finalists; having asked at the Porter’s lodge I have been told that Nick rents out gowns and you can email/talk to him about this if you want to get one for your graduation ceremony. Finally, I have been told by the OUSU President to remind finalists that they can still buy NUS cards that will give them 3 more years of student discounts even after they cease to be students!! Seems like a pretty good deal.

I held another drop-in session on Saturday. I hold these so that I have a period of time each week where I am completely available to answer JCR members’ questions. This week I was asked whether the vending machine could be mixed. Having messaged a JCR Treasurer from three years ago she says that they tried to find out the company in charge of servicing it and made no progress. However, our Domestic Officer will be attempting to phone the company this week to get this sorted; should this not work then we may have to look into changing the machines.

That’s all that’s happened this week. Next week I will be chasing up on what’s happening with the promised coffee machine and reduced accommodation costs for students with extended terms. I will be attending Equality Committee, Proctors’ Meeting, Academic Committee, OUSU Council, JCC informal lunch and Freshers’ Week Committee meeting! All this will be reported on next week!

Until then,

Alice xox

P.S. Bulletin