Minutes of the committee meeting on Monday 3rd Week, Michaelmas Term 2018.
OULD Committee Meeting Minutes
Michaelmas Term, 2018 1st Week
8th October, 2018
Present: Finn Conway (President), Damayanti Chatterjee (President-elect), Jake Olenick (Treasurer), Edd Peckston (Secretary), Olly Besley (Spirits), Shreyus Ganesh (Comms), Lauren Evans (General Committee), Megan Ward (Women’s Officer)
Apologies: Patrick Chapman (Campaigns), Shreyus Ganesh (Comms), Ben Harris (General Committee), Zahra Farzanekhoo (General Committee), Abbie McGhee (General Committee)
Absent:
Action points to take forward:
- Finn to look for bag of bags
- Damayanti to ask about trolley at Brasenose
- Megan to look at organising women’s only SDs
- Jake to gather statistics on women attendees at SDs
- Hayden to look at coffee houses for social on Friday
Meeting commences at 17:09
FC: No business
DC: This time last year carrying Tescos bags to SDs was getting too much for committee, we used the trolley as a solution. We’re hitting that stage every week. Last week we didn’t have enough committee. Carrying 3 tesco bags each seems a bit rustic, The tesco bags are just an awful way of carrying alcohol so there is a danger of danger of breaking stuff. Talk to Brasenose about carrying trolleys. Using bags for life.
FC: What happened to bag of bags?
DC: Adam claimed that as his bag
Finn: I’m talking about his bag of bags, full of bags for life
JO: We had a few Schuh bags – someone formerly on committee likely has it. We had the bag of bags in MT17 when I was Spirits
FC: When Marcel was spirits as well. Can’t remember when I last had it
JO: Maybe Marcel has it.
EP: Wasn’t that Marcel’s bag?
FC: No
OB: It’s either Marcel, Adam, or Nick?
JO: Maybe
Finn to look for bag of bags
DC: Tesco bags are bad
OB: Tesco bags are reusable and they’re not terrible
DC: They’re painful to carry
HS: If we weren’t at Brasenose it wouldn’t not possible
OB: If we were desperate we could have got one from Tesco. Could you guys ask about it?
DC: Can’t see the Brasenose porters saying no. It depends on where SD will be for the rest of term
EP: It will be in Brasenose up to 8th Week
FC: So we have an intra- Brasenose solution; do we have an extra-Brasenose solution?
Damayanti to ask about trolley at Brasenose
FC: We got Ben to take a trolley from LMH
OB: I’ve done it before as well – it’s moral improvement
FC: We could trolley from Tesco to Brasenose
DC: We should have used it last week
FC: We should use trolleys
DC: Can we reliably ask College to use their luggage trolleys?
EP: We can ask people colleges about using trolleys if we have members there
DC: We should review process every year to take account of changes.
LE: I have a few canvass bags – I can bring them
FC: I do too – if you have any to donate, please do
DC: Brasenose trolleys don’t have side, if your College trolleys have sides, that would be great
FC: Let’s move on to Olly
OB: The question of changing the price and profits from SD was raised last meeting, I said let’s wait last meeting – if we lower the price we can’t make any profit. If we lower the price we would need to decide if it’s something that we can make a loss on. Or we leave it at £4 and make some profit. There is an accessibility argument for lowering the price but we might be sacrificing a source of income and just make it cheaper for people drinking.
FC: We raised the price because we were losing money from it over the year. Raising the price helped our finances a lot. In terms of accessibility – SD still the cheapest of the events to go to. There’s not a worry there.
JO: We are still haemorrhaging money is what I meant. Right now, even if we made a profit every week, we would about break even after charity SDs. We should lower expenditure per person to £3. Which is what we did anyway this week, but only because we had leftovers this week
OB: How much profit did we make last week?
JO: I haven’t counted the moneybox yet, but our expected profit from last week was £122.36. We lost £87.69 in 1st Week.
OB: In 1st week we paid £50 for the room
JO: That’s included in the outgoings. So between the two that’s £35 profit over the two weeks
OB: The ideal thing is that when you down your budgt you do your calculation x£4. I’ll try and underspend that budget. We will have some weeks where we make more a larger profit. So that budget is sensible. I’m slightly worried about running short one week if we aim for £3.
JO: Aiming to spend £4 per person will result in us spending on average £4 per person. Spending £3 is a little tricky. We don’t want to be losing money on SDs as it is the largest movement of money. The options are to target a lower expenditure or changing how we do charity SDs so that we only contribute the profit. Let’s not lose triple-digits per term.
EP: I’m not comfortable changing charity SDs and giving less to charity.
FC: Fundamentally I agree with Jake in that the way we do charity SDs at the moment is dumb. Precedent means that we just give everything that’s in the money box to charity. A sensible way of doing would be just to donate profits. It’s difficult though.
JO: We could allow people to donate more. People could also say how much of their entry fee they want given to charity.
OB: I feel like this would be very complicated
DC: Surely they’d say just give it all
JO: We’d end up maybe losing money
OB: Just set it at £5 for Charity SDs. Seems the easiest way to do it.
Agreement from the room
OB: I don’t think setting the budget at £3 is sustainable
DC: How much alcohol should we have in reserve for a week?
OB: Hard to monitor how much we have during SD – a perfect information system isn’t possible, unless you assign people to individual tasks. But that’s an extra layer of complication. I would like something practically achievable
LE: There could be another aspect to charity SDs – not just taking money out of a box. Like a stupid raffle? Didn’t you find Lib Dem stash from the 80s? How many would be interested?
FC: We could do that. Charity lotteries have people more minded to give anyway. We culd try sourcing some cheap tat.
JO: So that would be with the same price?
LE: We could give something along with the profits
OB: Are we against raising to £5 for charity SDs? No one would be against it and it’s sensible for us
EP: We should announce it the week before
FC: Yeah we should. Assuming we stick to £3 model, with an average attendance 75 we’d raise £150, plus raffle. It’s nothing to sniff at but previously we’ve raised £400-£500 for two charities.If the amount would be £150, should we bring it down to one?
DC: The £400 is due to our explosion in popularity I’d think
JO: £400 was definitely HT.
JO: Seems like it’s probably going to be £4 that we target for spending per person. It’s still a small profit
OB: It’s a small profit, bong-term profit
JO: We rely on more people attending than we predicted
OB: £3 not sustainable - £3.50?
FC: Yeah - how much did we spend on alcohol and snacks in 1st week
JO: 1st week we spent £4.16 on alcohol and snacks.
OB: We had no idea how many people would turn up then.
FC: 2nd Week?
JO: It’s been suggested that I take account for leftover which I haven’t been doing. Not accounting for it: we spent £2 per person last week.
OB: My instinct is a £3.50 limit will take us to somewhere nice
JO: Future weeks will be more sustainable.
FC: We’ll go for £3.50 spending – move onto SD inclusivity
OB: 2nd motion went well, less shitposty. Number of new speakers picked up. The gender balance is not good. POIs are not great. It’s bit of a joke, but it’s quite intimidating. Gender balance is the biggest issue.
DC: When people are less drunk and we have smaller room, we have more new people, more women. That’s what happened last week as well potentially. That’s the trend I’ve seen.
FC: It makes sense
LE: Is there something we could do?
DC: There was one week at the KA where we almost had a gender balance. It was a bad SD and the room was bad. Difficult to balance with what we think SD should be.
FC: Where are we this week?
EP: LRVII, it’s about the same capacity as last week.
OB: Any suggestions?
JO: I thought I was picking new speakers in my term – I wasn’t and people picked me up on it– so try to alternate. Ask people to raise their hand if they want to speak. Have a mental quota.
FC: We had a two new one old system in MT17 – we’re trying to interact with new people.
DC: Is it getting women in the door? Gender parity requires more women need to speak. There are less women there in the first place.
HS: Just men for most of 1st motion in 1st week – no women put their hands up. We need to get more people through the door.
FC: The SD where we had the best gender balance was four women to every six men. The usual suspects put their hands up
DC: Women on committee speaking helps. My goal is to always have at least woman speak during PSP. Shitposting makes people a bit more courageous.
JO: 26% were female last week
LE: That’s so poor
MW: I was thinking once a term holding an extra women’s SD? Smaller room, women’s only event. I women had the chance to speak there they might feel more confident in speaking at SDs.
LE: I like the idea of this. If you’re a woman who’s interested in SDs you can come and talk to female committee members.
FC: If we could hold that that would be good.
DC: We have a women’s officer for this job
Megan to look at organising women’s only SDs
DC: I think it would have quite a significant effect
LE: Would this be like a social?
MW: Before I was thinking of organising a women’s only social, but I think that SDs would be more important
Jake to gather statistics on women attendees at SDs
EP: Suggestions made by former Icelandic MP at Drinking Liberally – she said that we should have a social just for women, something that people would feel safe going to.
FC: OULD has two problems: it is mostly male, and most of its events are alcohol-based. Alcoholic socials need to be balanced with an event like Cold Takes, for example.
OB: If you think there’s something I’m not buying for SDs – message me
FC: Wizz through questions to officers? To me? To Damayanti? To Jake? To Edd? To Olly? Any questions to Patrick in absentia? Any to Shreyus in absentia?
DC: Shreyus says everyone should share facebook events and our page
FC: The Facebook page is plugged in all of our weekly emails. Questions to Hayden?
OB: Question for Hayden – SDs for CULA crewdate, I’m happy to help out
FC: Any questions to General Committee? One more item – we had pub quiz scheduled for this week. We’ve rescheduled it. We should hold another social, preferably non-alcholic
EP: Film night?
FC: Clashes with union ball
HS: Tours of central Oxford?
LE: Coffee?
FC: Liber-tea? We’d have to steal it from BULD
Hayden to look at coffee houses for social on Friday
JO: I’ve been trialling bank transfers at SD – works surprinsingly and people are actually paying
FC: Nice. By the way, Alumni dinner going well, RSVPs about to go out. If take-up is slow on ticket buying, I’ll extend invitations to OxWAb and Oxford East members. I’ll keep on expanding our.
Meeting close at 17:54
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