JCR meeting 26/01/2025

Foundation year students on the JCR

LN: suggestion of having a foundation year rep on the JCR – could be current foundation year running into next year, if they’re still here next year then they can oversee the foundation years next year
By-election could be run in October if they don’t stay for first year
TM – purpose of the role?
LN: represent foundation years on the JCR. Solves some of the problems, e.g. not freshers’ rep but could be foundation year rep instead
SK: same term we serve, March to March?
LN: yes, but might be able to make an exception for the foundation year rep and run October to October

Dates on 22nd & 23rd Feb – ballot

JCR elections 1st and 2nd weeks of March

17th March JCR handover dinner

Trees

LN: current working plan in college (not yet approved by governing body) – remove 4 trees, ones most critically at risk

Funding: JCR Stash

LN: we talked about committee stash before, came to quite a high price
SW: £22 per hoodie
LN: money couldn’t come from reserves bc it’s an annual thing
SP: thinking about not funding the entire thing from the JCR budget
LN: maybe each person could contribute say £15
Discussion of design/colour of hoodies
LN: cap to £200 paid by JCR

Funding: Pink Week

LN: request from pink week for some funding to run some events – about £100 total, 2x £50 for different events

Funding: co-curricular scheme

LN: students could get some funding to encourage doing a project completely outside their degree, give around £50 to help them make a start
LN: probably £50 cap per person, would have to limit the numbers
SC: who would decide who gets the money?
LN: for other colleges, it goes through their portal, looked at by academic registrar who is given guidelines and makes a decision – any contentious issues get sent to JCR Pres
SP: where would the money actually come from? Which pot
LN: maybe from the reserves?
SP: how much would it cost, sounds v expensive
IL: how many people?
LN: how it works at other colleges – they have a termly pot, students give a presentation and people vote on who should get the money. We probs wouldn’t do that model
JK: people could apply, one-time sort of thing, not just ongoing applications
LN: people could submit ideas and vote online?
TM: this would be expensive and we couldn’t give a meaningful amount of funding. We could give one person a decent amount or lots of people such a token amount that it’s not worth it. We don’t have that much money to spend. Optics about rent issue, giving out money for hobbies doesn’t look great. Also issues about if students misuse the money etc
LN: rationale is that we should support people doing things outside of academics bc Cam is stressful. What sort of figure do u think we could spend?
TM: if multiple people apply, say the budget is £1000, £50 isn’t actually that much money if you’re doing something that you need money from the JCR to do (expensive hobby that people couldn’t otherwise afford). Maybe run on a very small scale at the first instance to see how it goes
SD: there’s so many other funds that cover a lot of extra curriculars – there’s lots of societies, uni grants etc
LN: a lot of those are tied to your degree though, e.g. if you’re an engineer it’s easy to get that funding but not if you do English or something
TM: but that comes back to £50 not being that much money
LN: more a form of encouragement?
SK: how would that work? They buy the stuff first and then reclaim the money?
SP: we can’t give money to people, it has to be a reimbursement
LN: so system where you’re promised the amount and once you’ve done the project you submit your stuff and get reimbursed?
JK: could be an opportunity for access etc, where the money is a barrier
SC: the presentation element would put people off unless they really want to do it, put in the effort etc
SP: feels like money that shouldn’t be coming from us, hard to make the budget and take money from another society. Would be difficult for it be a yearly thing
IL: where’s the money for the JCR reno coming from?
SP: the reserves
LN: reserves are intended for single-use things, like redecorating the JCR, running a trial of something etc
IL: run a trial of it to see how it goes?
LN: seems like we need to agree on (i) the principle of it, and (ii) how much it should be
TM: we don’t have a crazy amount of spare cash, it is a nice idea but not really feasible in the long run. If we started with a small amount of money and only a few people, that would be okay, but if it becomes really popular, at some point priority decisions will have to be made which causes issues – why does my thing count for less etc. Maybe it will only be a few people and the money will make a difference, but there’s a worry that it won’t go like that – who knows, no one ever comes to the open meetings. If it gets out of hand it will run away on its own success. On principle I’m not opposed, it’s a great idea, but money isn’t infinite, there’s a lot of funding available and we do fund a lot of things, I worry that we’ll spend a lot of money for not a lot of good
LN: we need to decide some sort of cap – how much? Sam, budget?
SP: we’ve got two new socs already this term (table tennis and volleyball), it probably is feasible but it would have to come from anticipating underspending from certain areas. We’ve already over-allocated for this year by like 35%
LN: how much money should we allocate?
ESR: for a trial, maybe 3 people getting £50? Depends how many people are interested etc
SK: maybe do a survey first to see if people are actually interested in it?
SP: not really in favour
IL: maybe it’s something that we pass on for when we have more money
LN: vote on 3 people getting £50 each – 8 for, 3 against
JK: could ask at an access meeting, they might have ideas/other venues to go down
TM: I think that’s where we should start, there might be some funds from parts of the uni that aren’t well-publicised. We should identify some other sources of funding and make those known to Downing – then if we run a trial for this, it could be a criterion that you aren’t eligible for any other funds/have already been rejected
LN: we’ll start there, and TM and I can start to build a page on the website to increase transparency about funding available through the university; based on that we can decide whether to go ahead with the trial

Rent

LN: ballot is coming soon
TM: rent pot (amount of rent money that will be paid to College by 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th years) is £2,744,530 – 4.9% increase. Average price per week is determined by ‘rent weeks’ not ‘lease weeks’ (College shuts down over Xmas so don’t pay for those weeks) – mean average rent per week will be £202.61. With regret, we can’t do anything about that. We’ve tried our best to soften the blow, e.g. so band 1 doesn’t go crazy. I don’t think this is sustainable in the future and things will have to change

Band 12: £164
Band 7: £200
Band 1: £241

We tried lots of things but this is the best we could do. Either in future they’ll have to move to a different system e.g. without banding, everyone pays the same, or something significant will have to change. Out of ballot starts allocating from Monday.
SK: availability of short and long term contracts for 2nd and 3rd years?
TM: usually pretty evenly split; freshers all get short lease, and about 2/3 of 2nd and 3rd rooms are long lease
SC: did the MCR rent go up by the same amount?
LN: yes they go along with the JCR most of the time
TM: the weightings of bandings haven’t really changed since last year. A few things in the rooms browser are inaccurate but should be mostly sorted
SK: do you think there’ll be more issues this year with freshers choosing accom?
TM: still expensive, but freshers have short contracts so they can probably absorb it a bit more, I suspect the freshers might be fine. The things I’m worried about are like 38/36 Lensfield Road as they’re mostly Band 1 and it’s a lot of money. You can apply for rent reduction from College if you chose the cheapest room available when you picked it – if you didn’t then they won’t give you anything and we can’t do anything about that. I do think this is unsustainable
SK: the optics are so bad. People might be put off applying when they see how much the accommodation is. They’ll just keep renovating and putting the prices up
TM: I do think this will be a big issue in the future, people might be pushed to rent strikes. If anyone has any questions, I am happy to answer them.
TM: we want College to do an explanation. The balloting system is complex and the inner workings aren’t always apparent. People sometimes assume that the JCR decides a lot e.g. the rent pot, when really College has the power. We want College to do some kind of presentation about why rent is going up, where that money is going (what it’s paying for), what they’re doing to try not to pass this onto students. College have said they’ll do an open meeting but we oppose – people don’t really come to open meetings, it won’t be recorded so hard to hold College to it, it might end up being confrontational so people won’t want to come, it’s boring etc. Lucas and I want them to do a recorded presentation, put it in writing, coming from them and not the JCR. We don’t want to be asked those questions
ESR: College need to take accountability, send out a video presentation and an email setting out the same info, so that students hear it directly from College
TM: College does subsidise the rent, but where is that money going? i.e. are the cleaners being paid well etc
LN: sounds like we all agree and want College to put something recorded/permanent out. They’ve said they’re opposed to putting something in writing.
TM: reasoning was that they think people will misunderstand
ESR: important to try and have a bit more continuity with the JCR so we can put next year in a better position

Officer updates

IL: guide dog meet and greet next Saturday, drop-in session in the next few weeks
LE: we have a date for rainbow formal – 1st March
CM: trying to organise Varsity, could be 2 weeks today
SU: clothes drop-off towards end of Feb
SC: gown donation scheme is pretty much up and running. Joint gardening sessions with Emma?
JK: academic discussions happened, payment should be going through soon; the SU-permarket has opened, runs tues and thurs 5-7, free food to people in hardship positions

AOB

SK: ents – hard to actually get people to come and to make profit off an ent. Wanted to ask the committee, how do we feel about just having one ent this term but a bigger one, as a handover ent. Apple and I wanted to do a handover ent with the new officers, maybe in the Howard Building instead of the JCR (difficult in terms of space).
LN: logistically does it work in Howard?
SK: yes, there is a bar, it’s a bit more expensive but it’ll work

Oops!