Controversy has arisen in Magdalen College this week following a motion passed at their General Meeting last Sunday awarding £40 to every student going on ‘Doxbridge’, the sporting tour of Dublin involving Oxford, Cambridge and Durham colleges, at a combined cost of £960.
Proposals are to be made at a JCR Committee meeting next week to alter the college’s constitution and allow motions which have been passed at General Meetings to be reconsidered in subsequent weeks.
This proposal has been seen by many as the result of the ‘Doxbridge’ motion, which passed by only four votes.
Over 80 signatures on a petition calling for this to be overturned have since been collected. Under the proposed rule change this will be enough for the result of the vote on the motion to be suspended and considered at a later date.
However, the petition has caused anger amongst many Magdalen students, some of whom are even threatening to resign from the JCR if the motion is overturned.
Matthew Chan, ex-JCR Vice-President of Magdalen, who organised the petition and opposed the original motion, received an abusive email signed by “The Doxbridge Massive”.
Students from Magdalen’s football and netball teams plan to travel on the ‘Doxbridge’ tour, which costs £219 per person and takes place over the Easter vacation. It markets itself as a ‘Sportsparty’ and concerns have been raised over whether the JCR’s money would in fact be spent on sport at all.
The motion passed by the extremely narrow margin of 33 votes to 29. Many complained that the meeting was ‘mobbed’ by those going on Doxbridge and their friends, who left as soon as the motion had passed.
Beth Goodwin and Hannah Thompson, who put forward the motion, argued that the funding would encourage participation in sport and “help with team bonding”. They had already approached the college for funding and been turned down.
Chan said, “This whole motion is a peculiarly macabre joke and deserves to be treated like one. I am kind of baffled that it passed at all, and will be doing everything I can to make sure that it doesn’t second time around, including indulging in a spot of the old constitutional pernicketitude.”
He argues that the email notifying members of the time and agenda of the General Meeting was not sent out until a few hours before it was due to take place, twenty-two hours and fifty-five minutes after the deadline specified in the JCR constitution.
He told Cherwell, “This motion represents a gross abuse of the circumstance that if you get enough people with a vested interest (in this case, £40 each) to come and vote for you at a GM, you can push through measures that privilege the few at the direct expense of the many.
“Some of the people going are not by any stretch of the imagination regulars on the respective teams. There is no way that the JCR should be paying for this, regardless of whether it can or not. And it probably can’t; not without damaging our spending on more worthwhile things.”
Chan’s actions have proven extremely divisive in Magdalen. Arnold Reigns, a 3rd Year English student, said “I support what Chan’s doing; rules should not be so strictly enforced or they become fundamentalist. ”
On the other hand, George Dix, a 4th Year Maths student said, “I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, including drunkenly pulling my dad, but none of them as stupid as what Chan is doing now.”
JCR President Tom Meakin told Cherwell, “In Fifth Week the JCR Committee will present a motion to amend the Constitution so as to allow motions to be re-heard if a proportion of the JCR wishes. This ‘cooling-off’ period will ensure that controversial decisions – be they costly, technical or otherwise – are taken only after wide consultation and are thus representative of the majority.
“It’s important to point out that whilst the Doxbridge motion was contentious, this move is sensible regardless. Whilst it might slow some areas of decision-making down, any increase in participation is a good thing.”
