The Conference of Common Rooms (CCR) met in the HB Allen Centre on Tuesday 3 March. This consisted of representatives from both the Junior Common Rooms (JCR) and Middle Common Rooms (MCR) of Oxford’s various colleges, and it was the second meeting of the term (the first one took place in Week 3). The meeting began at approximately 6:10pm, with strong attendance, and it was chaired by the SU President for Communities & Common Rooms, Shermar Pryce.
The meeting began with the SU informing participants of numerous Action Log updates (items which had been set for discussion in a previous meeting), with a notable one being that, on 23 February, postgraduate students received official assurance that course fee increases would remain capped at 6% or CPI for continuing cohorts of international students.
On a practical note, attendees were also told that automated vote counts would be live on the Common Room Election Platform by the end of the week, helping to reduce the time for election results to be returned. However, this would still require authorisation from the SU inbox, which led some participants to complain that this did not fully eliminate the difficulties they had faced with voting on CCR motions in the past.
The meeting’s participants also asked several questions about the Action Log updates. One issue for discussion was the support that the SU provides to transgender individuals following the UK Supreme Court’s decision in Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers. Alisa Brown, the SU President for Welfare, Equity, and Inclusion, reiterated the SU’s support for all transgender, non-binary, and intersex individuals while revealing that they were currently gathering community experiences.
Another participant asked who had been responsible for maintaining the discontinued student bus scheme; this had been carried out by Oxford Brookes University. Finally, a different common room president asked when the Student Finance Plan would be unveiled, with the SU’s representatives answering that this would be revealed this week.
The meeting then proceeded to discuss and vote upon a variety of motions. The first one, proposed by the MCR President of The Queen’s College, was to compel the SU to lobby the University to ensure that non-sabbatical students would be able to sit on key university committees, especially the University Council (similar to Cambridge University). This was met with a largely negative reaction from the meeting’s participants, with one particular concern being that individuals would not possess voting rights, so the motion would have little impact. This point was raised by the representative from St Anthony’s JCR, who believed that guaranteeing voting rights for student representatives on these committees was much more important. The President of Lincoln MCR agreed, believing that such a measure would only add another layer of bureaucracy. The motion’s proposer responded that voting rights were a separate issue, one which would require amending Oxford’s Statute Nonetheless, in their view, “having a third voice is never harmful” – especially if it comes from a “perspective completely different from that of Sabbatical Officers”. Another concern, which was raised by both Alisa Brown and the President of Sommerville MCR, was whether it would be possible to balance the intensive workload of an Oxford degree with the responsibilities of the proposed position.
The second motion was to mandate the SU to write formally to the University about establishing a guarantor service for all students who lack access to a UK-based guarantor. This was proposed by the President of Wadham College MCR, and it was seconded by multiple common room presidents, including the GCR President of St Anthony’s College and multiple Sabbatical Officers. The proposer stressed the urgency of having a UK-based guarantor: it could no longer be bypassed due to recent legislation in Parliament. It was stressed that this motion would overwhelmingly benefit international and disadvantaged students, with numerous universities already pursuing similar initiatives, a notable example being Bristol University’s partnership with private guarantors.
This motion received extensive support, with no-one speaking in opposition. Representatives from St Anthony’s JCR and St Cross SCR stressed the need for this measure to be introduced quickly, with the former noting that it was needed by postgraduate students especially. The latter declared that it was a “cry of shame” that an international student could do everything right but still feel anxious about something as trivial as a UK-based guarantor.
The third motion, proposed by the representative from St Catherine’s College MCR, sought for the SU to advocate to the University Council that it follow Cambridge’s example in permanently preserving students’ university emails, or allowing alumni to forward emails from their old university addresses to Oxford alumni ones. This motion led to minimal discussion, with only one comment in favour and no representatives speaking against it.
Following these motions, Alisa Brown briefed the meeting on the Government’s student loan reforms, especially their announcement that they would be raising the Plan 2 student loan repayment threshold to £29,385 in April 2026, then freezing it at that level until April 2030. She explained that the Government believes this would help achieve a balanced fiscal policy, while the National Union of Students has criticised the measure for penalising those from less privileged backgrounds and for leaving graduates worse off in the long term. She informed the conference that she is planning to meet with Oxford MPs on 11 March before speaking to a larger group of 60 cross-party MPs. She clarified that this measure was currently only for undergraduates, but stressed it was possible that the Government could choose to extend this to postgraduates.
There was also a discussion of the perks given to JCR and MCR presidents at different colleges. There was a range of perspectives about this: one representative argued that increasing the number of perks would attract people solely driven by a desire to take advantage of them, while others argued that their presidential roles were viewed as thankless tasks, discouraging people from taking them on. This perspective was offered by Wadham’s MCR President, who said that the positions’ excessive workloads, compensated by only a small number of benefits, made people reluctant to take them. The representative of St Cross College’s SRC revealed that she previously worked at a company before pursuing her postgraduate degree, and that she would not expect anyone to do the tasks they did without remuneration.