James College, which celebrated its twenty-first birthday this year, is tucked away in the south-west corner of campus. It’s mostly known for its sporting prowess – James teams regularly top college tables in the biggest sports.
Without the historical foundations of Derwent, Langwith or Vanbrugh, though, James struggled for a long time to maintain a strong sense of college spirit. Recently, though, the James JCRC has made steps to remedy this by introducing better and more varied college events, and the college’s new bar The Lounge, opened this term, is sure to help them along their way.
We spoke to Emma Bartlett just as her year as College Chair came to a close, and asked how much of an impact her committee has had this year. Last December, Bartlett announced her aim to fully integrate James’s students with their JCRC, making committee meeting minutes available online and generally raising student awareness of the role of their JCRC. She also pledged to get rid of the image of James as a college without a unified spirit, something that her predecessor Tim Green had said that he found difficult. Vision asked Barlett what her greatest successes, failures and lessons learnt from the year have been…
What are your greatest achievements from your term as Chair?
I would say a major one would be making the new college bar right for the students. After a lot of meetings and discussions, finally seeing the University listen to us was fantastic. They really worked with us to expand the original bar capacity and change the furniture – we even got the booths we wanted! It is such a great place for James students to go to and chill out, and has definitely been a hit this term.
Getting Reggie Yates to our Freshers Week was brilliant. After we had two acts pull out in Freshers Week I liaised with YUSU for one of the most stressful days as Chair that I’ve had in order to get Reggie Yates – we couldn’t have disappointed students now, could we!
Freshers Week was a sell-out event and we got rid of 800 wristbands, which was fantastic! We’ve also just sold out of our Christmas formal tickets – all 450 of them – which is exciting too.
And, unlike Nouse reported, we did in fact win the RAG cup!
What are you greatest regrets from your term as Chair?
I can’t think of any!
Who has been your “Committee Superstar”?
The whole committee has been fantastic at pulling together this year, which has been great! I suppose I should mention the RAG boys, as they even went as far as waxing their nipples in front of the whole college for charity, and they raised over £700 just on that day alone! Now that is commitment!
What advice would you give your successor?
Er, don’t be afraid of delegating as you can’t do it all on your own!
Vision also spoke to newly elected College Chair Laura Watson, who has been Ents Rep this year, about her experience on the JCRC so far. She told ud: “This past year, members of the JCRC have worked incredibly hard to ensure that James College is the best on campus. This has been evident through the college’s achievements: we won the RAG Cup; came second in the Volunteering Cup; had a very successful Freshers Week and sell-out events throughout the year; James Woollard, James College’s Vice-Chair for Welfare won the YUSU AWARD for Welfare, beating Nightline; we won the ‘Student Switch-off,’ and, finally, organised sports competitions against other universities, for example Collingwood College, Durham.
Personally, this past year I’ve had an absolutely brilliant time, working with some amazing people whose enthusiasm for James College has made every minute of being involved worthwhile.”
Outgoing Services Vice-Chair Grace Teh said about her time on the JCRC: “When I first arrived in Freshers Week I knew that I wanted to get involved in Uni life as much as possible and being on the James JCRC has been a great way to achieve that. First year I was volunteering rep which was lots of fun, trying to find different college challenges to do and doing the widest range of things, from gardening to painting sheds! It’s a great way to meet a lot of new people, from the freshers that you greet on moving-in day to people in other JCRCs.
“This past year I have been Services Vice-Chair. I wanted to do something completely different from volunteering and I wanted to have a bigger role in the college, especially on the events side of the JCRC. I wanted to get more people involved in college life, and get students just generally more enthusiastic about James as a whole, through regular newsletters, great merch and some even better events.
“We’ve had some awesome events this year, from Quad Dash and Bash with Huw Stephens, sell-out Pub Golfs, a completely sold out Freshers Week and, most recently, a record-breaking 450-guest Christmas Formal.
“It has been a challenging year, especially trying to balance it with other activities and of course the degree, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say there weren’t times where I was like ‘Why am I doing all this?!’ – but it feels really awesome when you see something that you’ve all been working on come together. After Freshers Week I loved having people tell me how much fun they had and it really makes it all worthwhile!”
We also tracked down some James students to get their opinions on how good a job the JCRC has done this year.
First Year Poppy Bullard: “The JCRC has influenced my life here insofar as they maintain a strong student presence and provide an accessible group of students if other students were concerned or had questions about college life.
“We have had some great events this term, but personally my favourite was the understated Live Lounge open mic night, which was a more relaxed, sober way to get some college unity than other club-type nights.”
Second Year Hannah Allies: “My experience of the James JCRC has been very positive. In my first year they had a visible presence within the college and did a really good job with events. They do seem genuinely dedicated and want the best for the college and this made me run to be part of the committee in this year’s elections.”
Third Year Frankie May: “They seem to be doing a good job, although as a third year I’m not particularly involved with the college. When I was a fresher, the events weren’t great – they were well organised but not many people went. Since then they’ve improved. I’ve never had to talk to anyone from the Welfare side of things, but from the sounds of it they know what they’re doing.”
Finally, we convinced a reluctant Bartlett to sum up her experience as James College Chair in three words:
This is tricky but I’m going to go for: fun, challenging and rewarding.