Important University-wide changes to SCR-JCR relationships are to be implemented in the near future, which are likely to be shaped by the outrage over the ousting of the Queen’s College JCR President.
Oxford has announced a review of its appeals and complaint procedures linked to disciplinary matters focusing both on the nature of dissmals and also disparity between colleges’ use of fines and community service.
There was widespread opposition when Nathan Roberts was forced to resign his JCR presidency by Queen’s SCR after failing to achieve a 2:1 in his prelims. The authorities’ further refusal to allow him an appeal seemed to many as if student voices, including those of 30 JCR presidents, had been deemed irrelevant.
The review is expected to look into the case of Nathan Roberts as, after he was denied an appeal, he effectively beat the system by getting a teddy bear voted in as the next JCR President.
Officials insist the review was not prompted by the recent anger that surrounded his dismissal. However, the review will have to look at incidents such Roberts’ as examples of where the student body felt that the denial of an appeal was unjust.
There was concern early on in the process that the University had not learnt its lesson when it was revealed that one of the reviewing bodies, the Conference of Colleges, would not have any student representation. However, negotiations with OUSU have ensured a VP on both this and the University working group.
Jonny Medland, VP for Access and Academic Affairs, holds high hopes for the review. He commented, “These issues impact students every year and I’m looking forward to working to improve the procedures which already exist. The current systems can be unclear, needlessly complex and hugely variable across colleges and clearer guidance as to how students will be treated is long overdue.”
Both the University group and the Conference of Colleges hope to present initial recommendations by the end of the academic year.
It is hoped that the review will produce cross-college consistency in some areas of disciplinary policy, since at the moment there are wide variations. For example, whilst many colleges use fines as punishment for rule-breaking, some use community service.
This punishment is seen as fairer by several colleges, including Worcester, as fines do not affect students from different financial backgrounds in the same way, whereas community service has the same effect on everyone.
However, some colleges have found it difficult to implement community service as a form of discipline. Carolyne Larrington, Senior Dean at St John’s College stated, “In practice we don’t use community service as it is difficult to find tasks for offenders to do, though this has been a policy in the past…we have found that the supervision of community service is something we would not want to devolve onto the domestic or gardening staff. So we have returned to fines.”
In what appears to be another response to the events at Queen’s, St Anne’s College this week debated a proposal to introduce contracts for JCR members, whereby they would have to agree to resign their position if they failed to achieve above a 2:2 in prelims.
After discussions between members of the JCR Committee and the SCR, there seems to have been a move to re-word the proposal so that there was less compulsion for JCR members to resign, and so that decisions would not be made on the results of prelims alone, but would take into account collections and tutors’ reports.
The Academic Affairs Committee met on Wednesday to discuss the proposal, and after some debate it was decided that the matter needed further consultation within the JCR.
It will be debated again in second week of Hilary Term. Richard Holland, the JCR Academic Rep stated, “Needless to say we don’t agree with the proposal in its present form but were are looking to work with College constructively to find an acceptable solution.”
