AB: Why do you want to be the president of the Trevs JCR?

DW: I’m in my fourth year now, and I’ve been involved with Trevs since my first year. Through a lot of that, I’ve been helping out with events and just kind of generally involved.

And I’ve spent now four years getting back from the JCR, so I want to put in one last year to hopefully give the same opportunities to people next year that I’ve had through my four years here.

AB: Why should people vote for you, and what can you bring to Trevs as JCR president?

DW: I’ve got four years of experience in various roles, but a lot of them through events. I’ve been involved in organising in some capacity, I think, every single event in the four years after my freshers’ week, through a mixture of tech committee, tech manager, music rep, and frepping.

It’s given me the experience and knowledge of what works. So, Winter Ball this year worked really well. I was involved in sorting out a lot of the logistics for keeping the costs down from a tech perspective.

I can keep that going forward. I’ve seen what doesn’t work, like Trevs’ Night last year, or Winter Ball in previous years. I’m quite glad that with Rosie, this year’s social chair, we were able to make a Winter Ball that did work. Using the knowledge of what does and doesn’t work will hopefully continue making a better events calendar for the following year.

AB: What would you want to achieve during your time in the office?

DW: There’s kind of two things. I’m not running on a huge manifesto, because honestly, I think the JCR is in quite a healthy place at the moment, through the work that Harry, Cody and Rosie, in particular, on the exec, have done.

I want to bring even more events to Trevs. I want to bring back Charity Ball, which is looking like it’s not going to happen this year, for a second year running.

I’m quite keen to have a whole week of Refresher’s events. I know this is something that gets mentioned every year by Trevs candidates. It’s something that used to happen before COVID and it’s not been brought back.

Last year, when I was Clubs and Societies Officer, I tried running a Refresher’s fair, which was an absolute catastrophe in terms of attendance, and the event was dull. But I think with a whole week of events, so club nights, a Refreshers’ bop, clubs and societies’ taster sessions, as well as potentially a fair; I’d have to gauge interest on that. Those are the two big things.

I want to bring even more events to Trevs

They’re both second term, because second term is a bit quieter. Then the other thing I want to do is bump up the amount of smaller events. I’m in charge of Unplugged, and have been involved since my fresher’s week, on both the tech side and the music side, and I want to carry on with them.

Harry brought in karaoke this year, which has been an absolute success. There’s a Halloween bar night this year, which was really popular. I want to look at ways of adding in smaller events that don’t really cost the JCR a whole lot to run.

There’s events, and then there’s financial sustainability. Trevs has been struggling with financial stability, since the President switched over to a sabbatical role in about 2018.

So, it’s looking at the long-term future of the finances of Trevs, and how do we stabilise financially? I’m not currently in a position to tell you how we answer that, because I can’t see all of the budget spreadsheets, but it is a really big push. Can we get more money from the SU? Is that a possibility? I know when George Little was President, that was a route they explored, and a lot of the Presidents came together and put some pressure on the SU.

Can we do that again? Can we get more funding for events from college, especially with it being the anniversary next year, and college already planning a lot of events with alumni involved. Can we build an alumni network like Castle and Hatfield have? Exploring all the possible different ways of generating just a little bit more money, so we can be more financially stable and hopefully not make a loss on the academic year, like has happened a lot in recent years.

AB: Is there anything that the JCR is doing that you would change, or anything in college that you would try to change?

DW: Not massive things.

I think this year, with Harry in charge, we’ve had a really good year. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so there’s a few things here or there where I’d like to put more money into certain places, to basically push the limit of how much can I get from college to keep the JCR costs down. To use an example, when I was a fresher, the welfare team had a budget of about £2,000, and that’s been cut to a quarter of what it was then, because we’re able to get lots more money from College for buying the welfare provisions.

So are there other things like that? I know College are quite keen to invest in the visual arts at the moment, so what can I do to enhance that? Nothing drastic, nothing major.

AB: Recently, Trevs has suffered from low engagement across College life. How can this be rectified?

DW: I think saying low engagement is a little bit misleading, because while we’ve had low engagement in JCR meetings and stuff, the engagement in events is higher than it’s ever been.

You’ve only got to look to karaoke nights, Unplugged nights, Winter Ball ticket sales, all of those.

So with the event side of things, I don’t think there is an engagement problem. With the JCR politics side, yes, and running for tiered positions, there is a bit of a drop from when I was in first and second year.

And I think the way of approaching it is to build in ways of having low-effort roles. So, a bit like frepping, you volunteer for two weeks when you’ve got no academics, and then you’re done. I know in previous years we’ve had tier three positions which haven’t had strong engagement, but is there a way of advertising them in a way which gets people excited for one hour a week’s worth of effort, like the Steering Committee?

When I was a fresher, there were over a dozen people who ran for the seven spots on the Steering Committee. Is there a way we can generate that excitement for the smaller roles that then can build up into the larger roles when people are later in their university life? It really starts at the bottom and during freshers week for both the freshers and the Freps.

Something I’ve seen before that works is keeping the Freps involved. And I don’t know how that works. That’s something that, if I get into office, I can think about over the summer.

AB: What would you say to the students who say that the JCR does not affect them?

DW: I think I’d first like to have a chat with these people. It’s a bit of a cliché to say, come and have a chat with me about that.

But I really believe that if you do any level of college sport, college societies, work at the bar or the buttery, come to Trevs Bar as a customer, use Trevs Library, all of these things are places where the JCR can have an impact.

Even somewhere like the library is completely looked after by College, down to manning it. But if there’s something that we as the JCR can do to help you there, we’ve got the ability to do that. If you use college spaces, if you’re part of a society, then it does affect you whether you like it or not. But I want to have the healthiest working relationship possible.

I want to have the healthiest working relationship possible

I think through sports and societies, obviously, I’ve got experience with that through my time as clubs and societies officer when I worked with the music and sports reps to bring back the Societies Formal, which obviously was a big new thing, but went really well. And it’s that kind of event that brought in a lot of people who would otherwise perhaps be chanting unsavoury things about the JCR at their own events. But really, it does affect you because they’re JCR societies.

AB: How can you find out the needs and wants of the student body and then effectively address those?

DW: I think this is a question that will very much play into Bex’s advantage because she’s brought in a couple of very good systems this year with the anonymous feedback box that currently lives outside the JCR office as well as having an anonymous feedback form. I would basically just look to carry them on. Those are both ideas that have been brought up to the previous Executive Committee that just didn’t get actioned on that year. But this year, with Bex as Vice President, they have been addressed, and in Exec meetings, we have a look at the feedback and responses.

Most weeks there are between one and five bits of feedback across the box and the form and we discuss them as an Exec and have some answers and that’s worked really well. So, I would say, again, don’t reinvent the wheel. Maybe advertise it slightly more, but it’s there, it gets used consistently, even six months after the initial email was sent out, we are still getting people using the feedback form.

There’s also the JCR office. I know if you’ve got an issue this year and you see Harry in the office, he’s more than happy to bring you in and have a chat about it. This year, people are engaging with going to talk to Harry in a way that’s opened up to productive conversation.

AB: Finally, what does Trevs mean to you?

DW: For me, it’s just a community where everyone’s welcome. You don’t have to be part of it if you don’t want to, but if you are, great. We put on a wide range of events for you to get involved with and are there to support people.

I will act in the students’ best interests; sometimes in university life, it can feel like the people in charge, the staff, don’t have what the students really want in mind. So being that representative for the students, to fight for the students to get what they want, and run events that the students want.

Voting for JCR President opens on Monday 26th January.

Image: Livia Zuercher