The agenda for the first ‘Conference of Common Rooms’ run by Oxford University Student Union (SU) has been announced. Oxford SU explains that this new pilot model aims to ‘bring together Common Room representatives and Officers of the Student Union’. Given the significant changes to the SU entailed by the ‘Transformation Plan’ and a significant restructuring of leadership positions, this project appears to be another step toward bridging a gap between college and university-wide discourse. The event will take place at 18:00 on Thursday 15 May at the H. B. Allen Centre, which is the graduate centre of Keble College. Meetings are scheduled to occur twice a term, in Week 3 and Week 7, meaning the second assembly will take place on Tuesday 10 June. Whilst the conference will mainly be an assembly of Common Room Committee members, there are some tickets available for students to attend as well. 

As outlined in the Conference of Common Rooms (CCR) Pilot Guide, the meetings will consist of one representative from each college’s Common Room to vote on policies and mandates that concern students. Oxford SU has outlined three different types of decisions that the CCR will make:

  1. Conference Policy: Decisions that require consensus to pass, issues that students care about. 
  2. Conference Mandate: SU Officers asked to take action on something, decisions require a majority vote of members to pass. 
  3. Accountability Action: Used to hold an Officer/the SU/a postholder of the CCR accountable for a position they have taken on something which does not align with the other two categories. 

The guide outlines that, as a representative model, the most effective way of getting something onto the CCR agenda for future sessions will be to discuss with your Common Room Committee, or one of the SU Officers. 

For the first CCR, the agenda will discuss issues such as international student fees, street lighting in Oxford, the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding notions of sex and gender, advocacy for the University’s divestment from arms companies, and the future of undergraduate admissions testing. The motion regarding international student fees will challenge the transparency of the current system, and call for a more transparent scheme that ‘fixes fees’ and provides ‘more direct communication with students’. Given the recent Supreme Court ruling (and indeed, recent protest action within Oxford), a motion will mandate Oxford SU to ‘reaffirm support’ for the trans, intersex, and non-binary community. Further to this, it will advocate that the SU does more to campaign for trans-inclusive policy, as well as coordinating with the University to ‘protect trans students’ access to facilities’ that align with their gender identity. The agenda in full can be found here. 

This initiative really does show promise as a project to both align individual college and university-wide interests, and also to reflect the demands and concerns of students from across the university community. As students, it really does come down to us to use the systems available to us to advocate for our interests and make change within the community that we exist in. Initiatives such as this certainly seem like a step in the right direction.