Mission: Mandate
Elections for JCR President are approaching in most colleges. Some of you will run, and will lose. A lot of you could have won, but won't run. Fine. But many of the non-running potential-winners decide not to stand for the wrong reasons. Why? Because of the common misconceptions concerning the role, function and life of JCR Presidents.
Some of the generally recognized problems are in fact true.
Your inbox will become a junkbox. Attending JCR Meetings is compulsory. Often irrelevant formal discussions with the SCR will waste your time.
But two often presupposed aspects of the job are for many a real turn-off. And they are far from being necessarily connected with it.
The first is a political one. The assumption that you are required to be an anti-fee activist, an 'occupier', a 'shouter' or a 'banner-carrier' does not rest on any tangible grounds in most of the University's colleges. They do obviously in Wadham or Balliol. But such colleges, if necessary to a certain extent, are a minority. As the JCR is by definition the only 'society' which encompasses the whole of the student body, its role is in fact very broad, and its whole point is to represent and include the majority of the students in college. It appears difficult to sustain today that politics are the main preoccupation of Oxford University students. The role of the JCR should certainly be of assisting those who wish to promote political views, as their JCR is the only collegiate body to which they can refer. But representing your college as a whole involves many more social and practical issues that make most of the average JCR President's work much more about management rather than 'government'.
OUSU activism is not required. On the contrary, most colleges are looking for people who will actually do something for them and not just use the function as an opportunity to make a political name for themselves in Oxford. A JCR President is not required to attend OUSU Council, though showing up once in a while is a good opportunity to confirm that not attending is generally wise. That being said, it can be genuinely interesting and useful on certain occasions.
The other traditional misconception is both social and academic. It is often falsely assumed a JCR President will have to abandon going out, chilling out, and working (out). Having to do more enables you to do even more. The need to be efficient and organized allows you to become extremely productive in your academic work, and also to set aside more playtime. That is no secret, and it is one of the main reasons so many employers are interested in JCR Presidents. The skills entailed by having to handle so many issues, even at such a small scale, are scarce at our age.
And of course, the free phone calls, the nice room, and the accumulation of invites are all true.
Don't get me wrong. It won't change your life. But it can be great fun. As long as you take the job seriously, and not yourself. Alex Grouet is JCR President of SEH
17th May 2001