Hamburger menu icon Search button

Minutes from TGM – Lent Term 2022

JANUARY 12, 2022 by RH660 ANNOUNCEMENTS

Agenda

Termly General Meeting on Wednesday 19 January at 7:00pm in the MCR Bar

Apologies

In Attendance: Rebecca, Conor, Sam, Jack, Audray, Shany, Paul, Éva, Michaela, Nick, Nora, Ivan, Madeline, Noa, Samin and Ozzy.

Confirmation of minutes from the previous meetings

The minutes from the last meeting were confirmed.

Issues arising from the minutes

Committee Reports and Questions to the Committee

President

  • Sam thanked all of the committee members and everyone running for a role in the committee.
  • Sam discussed the change to allow non-students to have voting rights and to take an executive position.
  • There are a few complications. It is not just our constitution would need to change but the make up of some of the college committees is specified in the own statues, but is specified that then must be students. It requires ascent from the Queen.
  • Rebecca raised that only a subset of the executive have to sit on the committee. A bit of a nuance. We would have to explicitly state what would be the 2 of 3. Terms of reference in finance committee, as well, in its own terms of reference.
  • Action point. The new committee will look into this in more details.

General Secretary

  • Rebecca thanked everyone and stepped down in her role as General Secretary.

Treasurer

  • Michaela has run a lot of events, including Pink Cocktails, New Year’s Eve and Around the World Party.

Academic Officer

  • We have had several CHUtalks. There are five more events for this term for sure (lots of interesting people).
  • Independently of the election result, the CHUtalks will go ahead.
  • After the suggestion of Nora, we are in negotiation with the Archive Committee and the Archive Center to have 4/5 people events to visit the archives.
  • There is the Around the World party tomorrow.

Bar

  • We have fully stocked, but a bit too many spirits.
  • Bar Secretary (Paul). We have negotiated with the Wine Merchants to have a wholesale order.  There will be wine very soon. We had the crawl (successful crawl). We had the night-in since the last meeting.
  • Going forward, have been trying to get loads of swap. Come to Peterhouse soon for a Black tie dinner.

Computing Officer

  • Not here.

Green Officer

  • I have a few things: (1) we had a meeting about the road over the Churchill road to 36 Storey’s going to be completely redone over the next three years. It is in the very early stages and it is a big investment. They are advocating for green construction and green advancement. There is a student who climate change effective mitigation seminar programme will be dropped in the group. The green officers are through the whole University going to start collaborating more. the next academic officer will be doing a panel (fun panel) about how to live sustainability at Churchill. I am going to be looking more into composting and in March, term ends on 18th and 19,000 bulbs last term. We are going to do a spring pickle, some fruit juices and some snacks and cakes (and potentially a musical artist). We can do a botanical talk and tell me some plant fun facts. George and I are struggling with trying to juggle with forward facing events and back end, so we are looking into a more working group, who would like to tackle some things to get a higher green impact award (platinum award last year, which is highest). Think about making more student focused. A Fellow is working on a smart sensor project. Normally these sensors would cost £200, but have been able to get down to £15. If you would like to get involved in 3D printed modules, data analysis or computing, surveys on how more comfortable and sustainable, technical then please reach out to the Green Officer. There are no postgrads on the project.

Equipment

  • Liam Webb is not in attendance.

External Social Secretary

  • Richard Bowen is not currently in attendance.

Internal Social Secretary

  • The Guest Night was amazing. Sami organised guest night.
  • Side note. Have been asked by May Event if any of the postgrads are keen to be part of their Ents team, if anyone is keen, contact Sami.

Family Representative

  • A story time event in the Chapel that went really well. Ben was doing the piano at the same time of the story (very magical).
  • Events have to be family-friendly rather than friendly-specific, so can be advertised then to the families (for example the Disney afternoon). Audray created a mailing list and has been keeping the families updated.
  • We are still waiting for someone to put their name forward for Families Representative.

Men’s Welfare

  • We had our MCR Drinks and Nibbles in our recently rebranded “Welfare Tea”. We had with the new welfare officers and just brainstorm how we might change it to get better engagement. It used to be called “Welfare tea”, but attendance was low. It is supposed to be non-alcoholic and a way to chill out and relax.
  • Comment from Samin: If it is welfare, I have experience of the Counsellors of College. They do quite a lot of event, but they are not advertised to postgraduate students. We can advertise them more widely to students. University Counselling Services (UCS). We should advertise services more.

Women’s Welfare

  • Yoga is going well. We have good attendance from the JCR.
  • Previously, we talked about having free menstrual products. There was some discussion with housekeeping. CUSU have started lobbying to put it in part of their campaign and then might become one big three.
  • JCR’s Women’s Welfare has been picking it up. They are putting a paper together to get it together.

LGBTQ+ Officer

  • Last term, we had a couple of events. We had a Bar night that was quite popular.
  • I have been planning for next month a big bar crawl with other Hill Colleges.
  • I will pass it over from whoever is taking over next.

EDI Officer

  • It has been a new role this year. I am still in conversation with Athene and Council to do a third Churchill, Race and Empire series. Potential speakers are Akala and David Onasula. If they both agree, then need to ask for more money.
  • College has committed to flying the Pan flag in Black History Month.

Disability Access

  • We have been involved in the road project and the disability access matters.
  • Action point:Secretary needs to circulate the survey for the disabled access.
  • MCR members should go to the disability access to organise accessibility.
  • In addition to all of that, in the goal in the upcoming term to improve accessibility in general for all events an idea role.
  • Coming to us about how we can make it more accessible and what are advice we can give to make it more accessible.
  • Advocated for ways to make it more accessible. Never hesitate to reach out to us.
  • Disabled Students’ Campaign website. Training. Disabled Students’ Rep from CUSU.

First Year Representative

  • There will be a Super Bowl Party in February.
  • They had a Christmas party. There will be a Disney thing this Sunday.
  • We are also planning a Valentine’s party. We are also planning to have a Latino night.
  • The Christmas party was really good – did two events – a wholesome one and a less wholesome (alcohol based) and a secret Santa.

Publicity and Communications Officer

  • The instagram is back up on running. It is getting good visibility. Getting 80-90 views per post every story. It is a good way to show our events and how the events are on.
  • Lorrie is trying to liaise with the communications manager of Churchill and one of the things is increase the visibility of the postgraduate students. Want to get some conferences on the paper. They want to shout out.
  • Murder mystery – organising with Shany and Michaela. Going to do a Mafia night. It is in the term card. You get to dress as any mafia, drink alcohol and play a game of mafia.
  • Canva account for the MCR Committee and make things more advertising in terms of posts. All of the advertising are all through Canva.
  • Takeover Tuesdays. They take over the Instagram and you follow their lives on Instagram and Outreach, so you can see what life is like. Fortnightly to see how it goes.
  • Board downstairs is very outdated (from 2017). We are going to bring it to this day and age. Instead of having exec, but just have their position and names. Something that is now. We can make it a nice noticeboard.

Hustings

For the contested roles, voting will happen on the Student Union website. Sam has included the link in the election emails. Voting will remain open for four days. It will open at 5 minutes to midnight. When elections close on Sunday evening, the results will not be available immediately. They will be processed during the day on Monday. There are no elections for the non-contested roles.

President 

Michaela Taylor Williams

Hello. I’m Michaela. I’m a Physics PhD studying imaging of cancer. I love the MCR and I want to build continue to build our community and make it better. I started on the MCR when I came to Churchill, started as first year rep, before moving to Treasurer. It has been my home since I’ve moved from Australia.

I have loved organising events, including helping at Christmas parties, lots of holidays events, including crafts, bar nights and the New Years Eve party.

I want to continue to make the community vibrant, energetic and open to everyone. The mcr is where we all go to de-stress and get away from our studies.

Some upcoming events around the world party, Disney and marvel movie night on Sunday and then Alice in Wonderland Murder Mystery (only 35 tickets left).

As MCR President, I want to continue holding events and helping others hold events. Events are currently largely organised by committee members, but I want to open it up to anyone. So,, everyone can get funding and widen organising and participation in events.

I also want to upgrade the MCR Bar and room to more modern features to give people a nicer environment to catch up with each other and to enjoy hanging out. We have already had discussions with Tom Boden about making the renovations, plan in the next month or so. We want to ask all MCR members for their input. We are considering billiards, pool table, speakers and upgraded furniture.

Additionally, I want to support more, dancing and pilates and environmental action. Additional hobbies to usual sporting ones, such as rowing and rugby.

On top of events, Churchill and MCR provide housing for so many of us. With high inflation at the moment, there could be significant price hikes. I understand how it impacts when have fixed stipend and fixed savings, want to minimise the impact and minimise the increase. We want to keep Churchill affordable for everyone.

There are many issues, such as maintenance and housekeeping, not tracked or followed up on. I want to improve reporting. Higher priority for recurring problems. I have also had discussions about improving accommodation, improving quality of outer hostels, refurbished kitchens, bathrooms and new furnitures and additional amenities, such as gym equipment, so that everyone has access to 5* accommodation.

I want to have welfare weeks and welfare weekends, crafts and informational sessions.

Paul Heller

Hi everyone. If you have had the misfortune of talking to me for more than one minute, you will have realised that I came from another College. I’ve been really struck by how friendly and welcoming it is and by the sheer quality of high quality events. We are genuinely so lucky to have so many amazing events. I have spoken to people at other colleges that do not attend MCR events. I want to talk about three main points.

(1) Rent. It seems like no candidate wants to pay more rent. I want to negotiate on a very clear aim. We have very high RPI (7.1%), which (given the current rent structure) would predict an 8.1% increase in prices. This affects students with fixed stipends or those relying on savings. I want to start by opening discussion. I want to discuss why college is continuing to increase real rent, despite historical operating profits. I want to come up with very clear goals of what we want to do. I have a lot of experience of negotiating on boards. I was the rep for the school of arts and humanities (which oversees a lot of faculties). I discussed financial matters with senior members of staff. I have experience  dealing with student interests. As part of StreetBite, I had to liaise with Cambridge City Council and had to explain why we were continuing operations during COVID-19. I know how to strike the balance on being robust on the things that matter to us while maintaining good relations with the people we work with.

(2) Committee. I want to enable people on the committee to do as good work as possible. I want to commit to a termly check in with everyone, something like having a cup of tea. Just so there is the opportunity to meet 1-1 with everyone. I want to know what work is important to them, and how we can help to take it forward. I want to offer administrative support or advice. I have a lot of experience of running events from my societies. I have a lot of leadership experience. I led a large charity for the past year, poker society, debating societies etc. Leading different groups during COVID has really built skills (when times get tough). Summer term is going to come sooner than we think.

(3) Transparency. Why has no one talked about stash? We cannot walkabout college-specific merchandise. Where are my Churchill dressing gowns and umbrellas? There are also more serious things. There is no transparency about what money is going in to the MCR and what it is being spent on. I want there to be a clear platform with treasurer and communications and publicity. That is very clear to the democratic organisation. The students need to know where the money is going. It brings a lot of clarity to the people on the MCR in how much can be spent on events.

Answers to questions

You both laid out quite comprehensive plans of what you want to do. What do you think your biggest challenge will be?

P: The rent one is a big one. I’m not the first person to come up with the bright idea to talk to College about rent. I don’t think they are going to be forthcoming on this issue. Striking balance about robust on specific issue, and why is that important to students and also a constructive point of view. It is going to take quite a lot of work to get done.

M: Yeah. Rents are obviously coming up, but I think it is really for the executive and as for president, developing relations with college so you can have open and honest conversations. Want to talk about why having the increase is important, how it impacts us and our studies and the impact. Building on the regulations that we currently have, but also taking that through, so we can represent the students, on the ground about what the students are and that the college can be on our side. The college would like to support everyone, would like to see us all succeed, but make sure what makes sense and is actually happening.

The MCR makes the decisions about who gets which room in College. Do you have any plans to change how rooms are distributed to people? How we force people to take up the hostels? What about priority to MCR member?

M: The ballot is somewhat of a necessary evil. Everyone would agree we would love to give everyone their first preference. The problem is that third and fourth year do not get room in College and do have to get outside accommodation. This can be particularly stressful when finishing your degree in fourth year. Outer hostels are generally less popular. We can improve by making the outer hostels nicer, so by making them more popular. We can also add long-term plans to add more accommodation that 3rd and 4th years are guaranteed accommodation and can still be part of the community. I think preferences. We should definitely re-examine how we allocate to committee members. They should not be getting first preference. It is very tricky to interfere with the code without changing how all the intricacies work in the allocation. We have to look at that. The problem is this year that we did want to do it so that committee members were not prioritised. As of last year, that advertised in a sense that these people got priority. Not following through with these promises. We could perhaps negotiate more with committee members for this year and further year in a more equal level playing field.

P: I have quite a different perspective. Some things are really great and some things that don’t make a lot of sense. I have spoken to presidents of other colleges and nothing like what happens here really happens at other Colleges. There are a few things. (1) We need to first think about the way the MCR currently has the role in setting rents, College keeps all of the power by setting what the rent adds up to. This is quite a problem. First of all as we try and have our negotiating, weirdly complicit in College rent policy. It is an unnecessary sort of division in College. We are not experts. It is weird admin work that does not normally fall on students. (2) Regarding the ballot issue. Even if we have promised committee members, that should not change going forward. This could have already fixed. I can fairly easily changing that now, even if we cannot get committee members to relinquish it. We do need to think about that system. At my previous college, I was told I would never get a rent system through. The rent measure – one -year COVID measure – and then suddenly became permanent in the few years afterwards. We need to seriously think about what admin work the MCR should be taking on and when is it appropriate to be having those powers over other students. What perks MCR Members are getting and if going forward those perks will not exist.

M: I just wanted to say that it is quite common for MCR to be involved in some kind of rent negotiation discussion at other Colleges. In part, we have had multiple conversations about how much power the MCR should. MCR should be consulted, but should not be setting the rent in college. It affects us at MCR students.

P: Apologies, I should have not said that the MCR was never involved in how it works. But, whenever brought it up, they have been quite shocked by the extent, not just getting input but the price of each room.

Question to Michaela. It is really good to see this level of interest. My question is first goes to Michaela. So in the past few weeks, I have noticed that you have put together an interesting line up of events. You have been in the committee for quite a few weeks. I was wondering if this was a political move. So my question is would you continue to organise events if you don’t win president? Would you still have the same level of enthusiasm?

M: In the past, when we were first year reps, me and Rebecca had an event every three to four weeks. This was before COVID and then COVID came along and we were not allowed to gather. I have also organised a lot of other events during the summer and did organise the Halloween party. I would love to continue organising events. It is not political. I have not been home in over 2 years and very personal, from Australia, so borders are quite complicated. I wanted for those potentially here in College needed something to enjoy and to bring together. Very personal.

Question to Michaela. You said as part of your campaign. You do not want to increase College rents. For those who do not know, in 2020, the College increased rent to almost 13% for Wolfson flat residents. There was no communication. The College increased rents to that level. Those of us below, did not know about it, we just saw our monthly bills and saw it had been increased. You also said that most PhD stipends does not increase by that level. What was your role on committee at the moment?

M: First year representative. No role in the negotiations. Executive role in those negotiations and now we have added in that family representative also plays a role. It was set by the executive.

Question to Paul. A lot of family events. How do you intend to ensure that there are more families involved in the activities of the MCR?

P: A lot of my events have been more on the alcohol-side of things, mostly because have been Bar Secretary. The Big Night In by nature is alcoholic. I don’t want to run all these myself, but other support existing committee members, who are doing an excellent job, and how can support them. Meeting with the individual representatives themselves, what are doing and how can take their work forward for and how can make families more involved and having a wide variety of different events. Bringing in to existing events.

Question to Paul. Obviously you have been organising bar events. It is not a new topic. They will be people who do not attend MCR as too many alcohol-related events.

P: The Bar has been a big space in bringing people together. It would definitely be good to get more people involved in that. I want to use the existing reps and the good work they are doing to bring more roles in. Very keen on, clearer delineation about what is associated with each role. A lot of energy about putting on events, but if we have a clearer, people on X side of welfare, their main objective is to put on these sides of events, such as less alcohol related or outcomes. Division of events, so can organise a subset and can organise non-alcoholic event.

Question to Paul. You are finishing halfway through the term of President. How will you cope with this?

P: I did not intend on staying next year, but I have really enjoyed my time and I am applying to stay. I just had a very productive conversation with my supervisor today.

Question to Michaela. We have talked about transparency with budgets. You are currently the Finance Officer. Do you have transparency?

M: In the Constitution, it says the Treasurer reports at each TGM and can be asked about it. I have prepared reports for the last TGM, but no one has chosen to ask about it. We have income from the College of around £7,000 to be spent on just in general on the MCR. There are restrictions on it. We do not spend money on alcohol. It has to be for the general MCR community. Freshers was the biggest expense. Freshers was 28%, welfare was 26%, social events 21% (should clarify that how divide it is quite difficult as freshers is also obviously social) and where do we draw that division. We should have 15% of academic and 10% families, equipment – other mostly been gardening. We also have about £6,000 in the private accounts.

Question to Michaela. Many committee members have asked for the accounts and you have not given them. Why now?

M: I was new to the Treasurer role. Also, I would like to say in every committee meeting it is very distracting for every single number in the table to be discussed. It is in our Constitution and we report on it in TGMs.

P: I just want to be clear on what we say when talking about transparency. Anyone at any time without requesting can see it, without having to request it and see how it is broken down.

Question to Michaela. Michaela you have talked about rent and how you want to stop rent going up. Have been banging on about this for over a year. Somewhere in March and April, when set out an email about why we think there shouldn’t be a rent increase and if anything there would be more. You had not engaged with the issue since then. Why not?

M: I am all in favour about this. We have had multiple discussions in committee. That email chain had actually came out what the actual bands were and what the actual rents were and the rent freeze for what had happened in preparation for the next year.

Secretary

Ivan Harkins

It is great to see three excellent candidates for the role of secretary. It is so pivotal for the MCR. It is the engine room for communication and really sets the tone for the MCR. I have chatted to Rebecca through the year about the secretary and the exec. It is the role that interacts the most with students and that is why I want to run for the role.

My manifesto is three platform points. I am glad to see pretty much every candidate picked up on them after I did. I have been working on them for the last 12-15 months. We moved on to campus just after the first lockdown. I immediately loved the community there and really liked the atmosphere there.

The families got hit with a 13% rent rise during the pandemic. It did not affect us as we were not living there, but we could see first hand the effects and wanted to raise awareness. We were surprised that did not only have to challenge college, but also had to challenge the MCR, so we had two barriers to get any change. It was really, really tough. from that, we learnt a lot about engaging with the College. We got to know about how they think about rent and how they do financial analysis. It has put me in a really good position to have those dialogues and open up the discussion on future postgraduate accommodation. The College has a bit of a blind spot to do with accommodation, as does not properly account for marginal benefit of accommodation.

As you can see, I am a little bit older than most people. I have worked for 13 years in finance, a lot advising real estate companies. I have a lot of professional acumen, can bring to those discussions. I can confidently challenge the College in what they say and also help identify win-win solutions.

You cannot do these things on your own. We tried to do it outside the MCR and as Men’s welfare, but you really need a strong exec. This is why I am also running with Paul and Sami. We have been hugely motivated by the new people, great ideas, fantastic energy, if we can keep that going.

Éva Benyei

Thank you. Have you ever thought that you were really part of something? It is a great feeling. This is what the MCR means for me. Last year, when I arrived here, I was pretty much lost. It was in the middle of a pandemic, but after I participated in online MCR events, I felt accepted and involved and loved. These were the feelings I would like to provide for everyone in the MCR.

You probably know me as the funny and friendly CBU-talker. You may have met me before or at the Conference of Everything. The most important thing is that I am a girl from the neighbourhood (a neighbour).

I have spent 10 years spent working with student societies. My main focus has been promoting science, coaching the next generation and advocating for women. I support inclusivity and building communities, but today I am not here to speak only about my myself.

I would like to represent you. This is why I am running for the MCR secretary position to work with Michaela and Kieran.

Living cost. It is a very important issue. It will hurt everyone in the MCR. It will hit those that are not financially privileged. We would like to act on it. We would like to change the accommodation state. We would like to live in warm and nice accommodation. We have to be taken seriously, with Michaela and Kieran, worked out a strategy and it is a good point to start.

However, in the MCR, there is much more than the question of just the rent. I really liked going to the bar after a hard day and having a cold pint or a G&T and have a chat with whoever is there. The bar and the room are not very good. We want to upgrade those and we already made the first steps and it could be done very quickly. I would like to involve everyone in the MCR. It is a community for everyone, not just for a small group of people.

We want to increase new ideas, and new opportunities for everyone to propose ideas and organise events. We want to involve friends and families more. We want to re-start inter-college events.

As your future secretary, I would really like to have transparent and open door of communication  between the college and you. We would like to initiate an anonymous opportunity for everyone to raise issue without the fear of judgement and personal aspect. I would really like to make clubs easier to form – this is how we celebrate the diversity in our College.

Thea Fennell

Hello everyone. I would like to say that I am not one for long speeches, but I can talk my hind leg off a donkey (if it did not stop laughing). You will have seen my posts made on the MCR Facebook page. I have a personal style of communication. You would be seeing a lot more of this in emails and so forth and I am so sorry…

Aside from obviously being hilarious, I do have a reasonable amount of expertise in organisational areas. I have been on the committee of various societies. I have been secretary of the Cambridge university nature society, Tolkien society and last but not least Churchill College music society. I am also on outgoing committee for light entertainment society (web master).

I have actually been employed by European institute of technology, as a publicity and event management. I have a reasonable amount of administrative experiencee of someone at the age of 23.

I have first hand experience of representing and speaking for student body. I was the representative of my masters course last year, actively speaking out and acting on student feedback. it also included forms, essay length email, a few furious text messages, actually more than one distressing one late night phone call. It was a crash course in terms of okay yes, compassionate listening to students, but some fairly hard negotiations. I made decisions that directly affected student welfare. It is the combination of affection and pragmatism that I would like to bring to the MCR.

That said, unlike everyone said, I have never been a member of the MCR Committee. I do not have that experience, but I do have over 4 years at Churchill. I recognise that there are differences between challenges of an academic cohort and the challenges that face the community at Churchill. Accommodation is one of the more obvious ones. Rent prices and room allocation are yet again a hot issue. It is one that I would address. I have been paying rent for almost half a decade.

I guess now from the fact I’ve been here so many years, you can probably tell I do also love Churchill. I love its community and I’m probably required to say that as a candidate, but it is does not mean that it is not also true. I would act on that love and all the administrative, stubborn determination and appalling sense of humour.

Regardless of the outcome, I would continue to serve the community in whatever way I can, baking far too many marmalade cakes, planting bluebell bulbs. I couldn’t do otherwise.

How would you communicate with people with gazette?

T: I am told that I have an idiosyncratic writing style. People have said that it was particularly funny. Also, I don’t know if this is an initiative, but I send memes with every email. Specifically, memes relevant to the meeting in question and sometimes people send them back. I do also recognise it is important to understand the scale of communication for different things. I have been doing web design for quite a while time, including the one coming to Churchill (Pantomime: Prophecy of Destiny). I have used Facebook and Canva, wide audience on social media. I am used to chasing people up by direct message.

I: It is something that we have already talked about in Paul’s speech. We want to talk to committee members, what is in the pipeline, weekly meetings, so even if do not have time or bandwidth to join committee lines, line of communication is open.

E: Firstly, the style is a bit old-fashioned and although Rebecca’s jokes make the gazette enjoyable, that is something that we need to consider going forward – using the new technologies. Coming up soon, the website design should be changed. I would be happy spending time making adverts.

With the gazette and all the information in email, they are very good and people read it and people get information about events. But, there is no system in it at the moment. I think it would be good to be on the same page with all committee members about how to send out emails in terms of timing and grouping them. No one likes one arriving in the middle of day. You hear a beeping and do not know if it is important. I want to do a survey to see how they would like to be communicated with, how would like to receive information. We should re-survey regularly.

Question to Ivan. With all your experience in accounting, why did you run for Secretary?

I: It is probably the role that gets the most engagement with the students. I don’t think in any role, it precludes you from participating in any conversations and working on any other aspects. You have to get something done. You have to work as a team. It doesn’t mean you don’t work together.

Thea. It is a contested election. Why were you drawn towards secretary and not other roles?

T: I like to think I’d be contributing to the MCR and there are roles available I might be very happy to fill them. I went for the role of secretary it was something that I understood fairly well and did read all of Rebecca’s emails. As a fellow former secretary of many societies, I respect all the effort that goes into them and supporting the role practically. As an MCR, you are speaking for students in a profound way in a different way to other societies, because you are dealing with day-to-day lives and things that affect them deeply.

Eva. How would you deal with anonymous forms? Do you think College should handle?

I am a trained person to deal with crisis. It is a personal interest of mine. I really like to understand these situations and to help people to understand these people and to find the solution.

The more detailed answer. In the last year, this kind of conflicts, also in the committee and outside. especially for people who are not involved in every event, a kind of fear that do not know who to reach out and how to reach out. to be the first point of contact and be able to direct people to other people if it is needed start in the situation. the way of the anonymous method. it could be very different depending on the technical background that we agree. two things I have in my mind. first of all anonymous form that is easiest form, but also a dedicated time and week to have the other executives to sit for a chat and have the possible for anyone to join with or without names. it is not just anonymous with your name and chat. This is the idea without being very boring.

T: It is run for secretarial candidate. has to ask it? but the question is, something is, confused a bit on the Facebook page. people campaign on teams. if we get some people from other teams. do people agree that they will work together happily? All want the MCR to continue building.

Treasurer

Samin Moghimiasl

I think everyone here already knows of me. I am Sam or Samin. I am a third year PhD student and running for treasurer. I have been in Cambridge for almost four years. I have been part of lots of different committees, department, sporting, with Churchill and with St Edmund’s. President of CPLC at the moment. I handle a lot of finances there. I have an idea how finances work.

I have been there for three years and as amazing as a job that previous committees have done. points that can be improved on. change that can do as mcr exec, best way to do exec.

Communication. I did not think that the communication was clear enough. I have had a couple of personal experiences, where during COVID I was isolated while I was living out. Reached out to the MCR as excluding people from living off-site from Churchill events. I am really concerned about MH and being alone, as people would get to go to events. Everyone living off site was excluded and as masters (one year). And as Ivan pointed out, they were the first obstacle in my way to get to College and trying to fight this. I had to fight the MCR – and then I had to go to College. Clearly as I didn’t get MCR backing, nothing came out of it.

Budget transparency. As much of as an amazing job with Michaela, budgeting and the MCR accounts can be more clear. I believe that this money is appointed by College to students. have the right to know how it is spent and what it is spent on. by this, we go into what Paul mentioned and that is budgeting. I am planning to meet with planning to organise events, previous year expenditure and see what sort of appropriate budget is. categorise events and the second is to assign an approximate budget for each of them. this is done by going through the accounts. speaking to certain committee members. issues like face when planning MCR events, such as very big gaps in budget for very similar events, wouldn’t happen as all of you happen. I organised a guest Night and the most stressful bit was not knowing what the budget was and the budget kept changing and I would come up with idea and they wouldn’t be approved.

And finally, rent. Seven people before me have mentioned. We don’t want the rent to go up. This is fair. One thing no one mentioned. Student input. We never want the rents to go but up, but where is your voice. I am elected as treasurer. I want to send out a questionnaire on rents about how it would make your life more difficult. Even one night and you cannot do as your rent has gone up. it is not your fault due to a pandemic. I want to ask about housekeeping, because even if though we were charged in 2021, we did not get housekeeping for most of it. where is our compensation for that? We can hear student voices and we can mobilise the student body for College. If it is the exec committee, it is the three people, and if it is the study body, it is 500 in postgrad if you use your voices.

Kieran Heal

For those of you who do not me, I have been here for almost 6 years now. I have been on Churchill spring ball committee, JCR treasurer, JCR president (Kieran has had a lot of roles. I will not list them all).

Rent is going to be a huge issue. We are all slightly scared. I’ve been talking to my contacts in other colleges about rent. I have been in four rent negotiations; they never get any more fun. A lot of other colleges are experiencing hikes at about 5-6%. We do have the upper hand. Students in other colleges are allowed to talk to each other, but the bursars are not allowed to discuss rents between them.

It cannot go to a select three. It has to be for everyone. We created a rent open meeting for the JCR. The Senior Tutor had to come to justify the rents. He had to take ownership for himself. The open meeting motion can only do so much. After the meeting, it came back to the college council as a jar resolution.

Kieran has worked on many college councils. I do know my stuff when dealing with college. We need to look at it holistically. We have to think about how bursaries have gone up. We need to argue that if rents are going up then bursaries have to go up by the same amount. They cannot separate the two. The available funding has to be advertised better.

We should look at how we band the rooms. We should try to keep it with us if we can. We can formulate motions and it will be much more transparent than taking to facilities and services committee.

Combined common room finance room committee. All societies are treated the same. I have made many requests to the body to change the form. One of the huge blockages at the moment is finding a senior treasurer. We need to make it clearer and we need to make it easier.

None of the accounts have gone bankrupt.

Question there is this popular general impression that the college has, although it is in writing it wants to students to apply for funding or bursary, but that is just in writing. they try everything to can to put an obstruction to them. students can apply for this. How do you think can address?

K: The job is fairly new. Expand remit to make it easier. Give anyone his email to annoy him as much as possible. It used to fall onto the bursar, and it made it more difficult. It then split into tutorial office. They created the new role of finance tutor. They are still trying to figure out where it fits. it would be good to say this is what we want to do, we want this to look like and how we want to apply.

S: There are three points. (1) First of all, even though the College do a lot of bursaries, they are not advertised. MCR Committee should be circulating information, especially for students on hardships to know of these bursaries. If you do not how are you going to apply? (2) once put pressure on fellow and master, once you have support from the entire MCR Committee, one person, I remember he had an issue with his supervision schedule, went there alone. if we sit that person throughout their fights, but their issues, going through the steps, to either give the awards or haven’t or advertise it a bit better, we can get the funding for students who really need them. MCR must advocate for you, sit on council meetings, support you and create a bridge between mcr members and college then can get a lot more supported.

President of committee. How are you going to balance your commitments?

K: There was one point in Kieran’s career when he had 5 positions. I think I might be okay.

S: While being president of CPLC, where the heaviest workload is doing Michaelmas Term, I also did all of the organisation of Guest Night (usually done by two people), I did all of it by myself. I enjoyed the work.

Kieran. I would like to understand. You have already been in the situation with negotiating rent. First I’d like to understand the context of the rent role. Your position? Your College?

K: It is very wrong to say that it is an adversarial system when you go into College. They just shut you off the system if you go in with that mindset. They do not have to engage with you. They want to and I have never met a member of the College staff that does not. It is the biggest thing you will do as treasurer. You have to be careful with how you fight the battle.

Follow-up question to Kieran. Did you question arguments from the College? Did you question the assumption that they would go “bankrupt”?

They have have profits to it is a charity under the Charities Act. The general account has a £3 million loss over the last year…

Question to Samin. You had a go at me multiple times about guest night. I tried very hard to have multiple discussions and open communication. I think there was a lack of communication. How will you work with others as part of the executive?

S: Can you give a time you did not ask for committee member. I think the first point to make is that the treasurer is very different to internal social secretary. I was picking out band, was setting up the decoration (which is very minor). If it goes onto more exec roles, where my decisions that have been influenced by mcr members, I would not necessarily ask for help. I don’t want to burden other people. I would ask for people’s opinion. if you go to my committee on powerlifting, things have changed since I’ve been there. I’ve worked very hard to make these changes.

Ozzy. What can we do as an MCR in creative in how we raise capital? We talked about operating costs are £7k. I was the scholarship officer to the African-Carribbean Society. They were able to get £15k from just one year. Rent – the College fundraise for all different things. Do you know how you would go about? Fundraise towards rent and reducing rents.

K: As Boat Club Treasurer and OC, we have sponsorship that doubled our yearly income from that sense. In the last year, I have as OC, managed to raise money for W2 and currently of about £20,000, £7,000 and £4,000. We are also running endowment campaign that it is a quarter of a million. Fundraising fairly slid. Fran is a development director, done it for rowing and rugby society. there are some donors who are not willing to give to something like this, rather than abstract college. we could get some more fundraising for MCR Bar. Done the calling campaign twice. just thinking about that. undergraduates have a top-up bursary. it might be talking about college to top-up bursary scheme. towards more graduate thing. a few more phd studentship, and moving it away from mphils into more phd things. that is something equivalent to top-off bursary.

S: So, like I said, being on many different committees, I saw the sports center get funding from ALDI and Osprey’s from funding from many different consulting companies. Given that Churchill is 70% STEM, I think one approach is different consulting companies and companies that are looking for data sxcientisrts or very different niche subjects or either Cgurcghill open day for career services, where they can first pick if you quite like from Churchill students. We can approach trying to raise funding from that aspect of things. Kieran mentioned that we could separate the people who wouldn’t be affected by the rent raise and the people who would be affected, to use the questionnaire that would send out to people, and how would your life and general studies by rent increase, even if its 2-3 days of the month that you are affected that is still your welfare that is being affected. if a lot of Churchill students and reply and answer and engage, can take that back and excuse to decrease to keep the rents as they are, so people that are affected by it by funding compensate for that rent gap.

Simon. With rent increase, how can you help students combat the college justifying rent increases or heating or mould in our accommodation?

K: I think it is. Holistically. We need to increase the maintenance budget alongside, or would increase maintenance by same amount of increasing rent. It was part of what I said in manifesto looking at room in colleges and how we band them, issues in accommodation. it was something we tried in boat club. getting college to publicly declare what they are doing. loves a spreadsheet. can do some ways to give them anonymous. if keep seeing the same problem over and over again, if we have some form of system that have to declare. you said that you would do that. holding accountable. We can force it to go to facilities and “bat them with a stick”.

S: First year in Churchill. Lived in Wallace house. When we made, more than 10 times, more than 3 times. still have not fixed it. Kieran suggested a more subtle to this, but when College, when you consistently make complaints to College, and they don’t take proper actions “go to Tom Boden”, blame circle (blame contractors), getting to point where illegal, if this is the case, everyone should have these issues to come forward, so can put together a document and can publish it publicly. Churchill College is not taking care of its students. We will wake up in the morning and it was so cold. We would go to brush our teeth and we wouldn’t have water. A few of our friends were considering lawyers. Once you have the backing of MCR, you can go to your MCR Rep (a bridge between mcr members and college and put an official complaint is), once you do. not respond to that, and can take things public. they respond to public things very quickly. White wine and vinegar.

Action point to the new committee.

External Social Secretary

Ravi Desor and Lazar Misic 

They have been elected.

Equality and Diversity Officer

Shahnaaz Kahn

Hi. I just want to say taking in a bit late as most issues on equality and diversity area. I hope to take over the good work.

LGBTQ+ Officer

Zoe Dietrich and Emma Bain

Hi everyone. My name is Zoe and I am an MPHil in Earth Sciences. I have to rush off to lab tonight, so we are going to introduce ourselves. we are really excited to keep going with work Jack is doing. Emma. MPhil in Modern Languages. We want to keep welfare at the centre of what we are doing. Gender Expression Fund and some really great social events. We want these to be center to everything. Allies as well as LGBTQ+ community. We also want to involve some of the other welfare officers. Hoping to collaborate with other officers. Are we going to have more games night? We are going to do that definitely.

Women’s Welfare Officer

Emily Schultz

Woo. Got the women’s welfare.

Men’s Welfare Officer

Landon Clark and Richard Bowen

I’m Landon and Richard is in there. We are men’s welfare./

Bar Treasurer

Reece McCoy and Matt Jones

talked with your, drank with you – talked about Matt, currently working downstairs. we are going to keep own the hard work of Conor, bringing it back to life. I’ll stop there. Elected.

Disability Access Officer

Nora and Noa 

You are re-elected.

Families’ Representative

Internal Social Secretary

Maddy and I want to run for internal social secretary. Maddie Haden*.

Matters for discussion

No Matters for discussion

Any other business

None.