The Queen's College Record 2023

A YEAR IN THE JCR
At the beginning of this year, when asked by the Provost
what I’d like to achieve for the JCR, I replied: “a sense of
community”. Through the hard work of the JCR Committee
this year, I feel this has been achieved. After years of
recovering from the loss of community because of the
COVID-19 pandemic, I think this year has turned a page in
establishing Queen’s JCR as the social hub it once was.
Reports and College Activities
Róisín Quinn (above)
President
Eva Bailey &
Yu Hang Hui
Vice President
Michaelmas started with the first Covid-free Freshers’
week since 2020. With this came a host of new events,
starting the week with an event in the JCR to establish it
as a space for socialising and mixing. There was also a
focus on reinstating the importance of JCRT, an essential
Queen’s tradition of capri-suns and cheese on toast served at 4 pm sharp every
day in the JCR.
JCR meetings have been very fruitful this year (after a slightly turbulent beginning
involving a contentious motion for purchasing an air fryer). They have been the
key to encouraging and supporting our JCR community at Queen’s. An example
of this is the newly introduced Arts Fund and Arts Committee. Art is central to the
JCR community at Queen’s, with a large proportion of our JCR making up much
of the arts scene at Oxford. In years past, student-run plays and exhibitions have
come to JCR meetings to request money for their productions, but we felt this year
that the Arts funding at Queen’s deserved more focus and care. A motion was
passed in Hilary to set up an Arts Committee and a new Arts Fund in the JCR. This
committee looks in detail at the distribution of funding to these productions and
has an increased budget, specifically for the Arts, greater than the JCR meetings
budget. This has meant we have been able to fund brilliant productions, such as
the EMS’ 25 th Putnam Annual Spelling Bee and we have sent student-written plays
to the Edinburgh Fringe, such as Oisin Byrne’s Blue Dragon.
Beyond JCR meetings, proposals made by the JCR committee this year have also
meant substantial change, for the better, to life at Queen’s. In particular, the proposal
(made by Food Reps Ellen Laker and Cameron Hutchinson) to change meal formats
at Queen’s. Previously all students had to book onto dinners by 11 am on the day
they wished to dine and had little choice in what they wanted for their dinner. This
meant that numbers began to dwindle. The sense of community created through
shared Hall dinners was becoming lost. To save this tradition at Queen’s, the JCR
introduced a new format for dinner, whereby at 1 st sitting, you now just have to turn
up with your Bod card and choose what you like and 2 nd sitting has remained in
the booking format. This new format has meant that dinner in Hall is once again
College Record 2023 | The Queen’s College 53