Slow news isn’t no news

Hey everyone,

There’s not a lot to report meetings-wise this week, however, it has been packed full of events thanks to our amazing, hard-working RAG Officer, Teeneka Mai. From Bake-Off, to a promise auction, to RAG Casino, we’ve had a week packed full of brilliantly organised events that had to bonus of raising money for charity. We’re incredibly lucky to have Teneeka on our Committee who has started off the quincentenary year brilliantly.

This week we have even more events, as we celebrate Environment and Ethics! Lizzie Shelmerdine has organised some fantastic events, including a party on Friday – make sure you come along (it’s only £2 entry).

On to more serious things, this week saw the first meeting of our Rent Negotiation team! Negotiations tend to be quite chilled at Corpus, but we met anyway to discuss what we might like to see changed other than rent prices. The biggest thing that came up was vacation residence costs for fourth year scientists. Vacation residence often causes a lot of strife for JCR members, particularly for scientists as they have to pay vac res at £15 a night for compulsory extended terms. Having met with a fourth year who kindly took me through their battels, we now have a better idea of how we can help change this problem. If, as a JCR member, you want to add to the discussion, please fill in our rent and charges survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXWQE2DxinJ8ibvugJXDUgos2hqlFh4h4J6pvgN_evG5qdg/viewform#responses! On top of this, Adjusted VNI has just been calculated and we are expecting to see a 2.71% rise in rent in the 2017-2018 period. If you have any questions about how this value is created, feel free to email me and I can send you the information. But remember, rent negotiations do not just have to be about rent, so if you have any worries about charges in general fill in the survey above or you can set up a confidential meeting with me!

Regarding welfare-based news in college, this Friday we were visited in JCR tea by our Dean of Welfare, Domestic Bursar and Vice President of the college to discuss college’s Prevent policy. Hopefully all questions were able to be answered but if you have any arising queries any of the figures mentioned above would be happy to answer them. We have a brand new who’s who sheet in the JCR if you’re unsure of who they are!

Linking to welfare, our Suspension Guide continues its beautifying progress on the computers in the OxStu offices. Get excited for its reveal at the end of this term. Suspension being a highly questioned topic currently at the university, the JCR would like to get a feel of college policy and have therefore created a survey for all students who have suspended/are currently suspending to fill in. It’s not compulsory but would help us a lot in understanding what happens. Link is here: https://goo.gl/forms/6BNQNKIDkeFQezxo2.

Apologies for it being a slow news week! Regarding JCR items such as a sofa, water boiler, shelving in the office and card reader in the Beer Cellar, the Domestic Bursar says that they are all being looked into, but can’t guarantee anything immediate as they are reliant on other factors. However, hopefully some of the issues will be reconciled ready for the beginning of Trinity term!

Love,

Alice xox

P.S. Here’s the Bulletin!