Hertford students were left outraged on Thursday as they learned that the SCR had voted to put the JCR bar under college management.
The bar was managed and financed by the JCR. Housed in a cellar of the college, it was renowned throughout Oxford and won awards for ‘Best College Bar’.
The status of the bar had been the subject of an emergency JCR meeting earlier in the week, in which members voted unanimously to oppose any effort to privatise the bar. A report compiled by the JCR also found that 96% of JCR members and 94% of MCR members oppose any replacement of student management with professional management.
The decision of the SCR, which sources say was a unanimous one, was made at a council meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Hertford JCR President, Mak Bavcic, was allowed to attend the meeting on behalf of the students, and presented members of the SCR with the report’s findings. Bavcic was told the SCR’s decision at a meeting yesterday afternoon.
As well as being under the management of the college, the bar will now be moved to the room occupied by the JCR, which is above ground in the Holywell quad. The new bar will house a coffee shop for use during the day. The cellar which housed the bar, described by one Hertford second year as “a brightly painted cellar with dry rot and one subterranean window”, will be converted to a JCR. Work is expected to take place over the Long Vacation.
There is uncertainty as to why college authorities have taken the decision, and students have as yet received no official communication from the SCR regarding either a decision or reasons for it.
However, there are suspicions among some Hertford students that last term’s Penguin fiasco – where several members of a drinking soceity were rusticated – may have played a part in the SCR passing the motion.
The decision making process has received harsh criticism from many members of the JCR.
JCR Treasurer, Alex Whitehead, expressed anger at the lack of JCR involvement in the decision-making process. The motion to privatise the bar was put in a section of the meeting named “Reserved Business”, a space normally used for sensitive issues, and one from which students are barred from taking part.
Whitehead said “It has been clear for some time that members of the SCR are militantly against the bar existing in its current form and what might be perceived as the ‘drinking culture’ of Hertford.
“They perceive a negative link between the social side of the college and academic results. Yet this is clearly wrong. Hertford is in the top half of the Norrington table; it manages to balance the academic and social sides very well.”
Over the past few terms Hertford has seen a rise in rent costs, and a scaling back of annual Freshers’ Week activities.
Others are angry about the way senior authorities have conducted themselves. Anaar Patel, the JCR Secretary, said that “by putting the motion in the Reserved Business section of the meeting, the JCR was actively excluded from a debate that affects all of its members.”
The Hertford bar is well-loved at the college. Whitehead commented that students “did not want bar to be privatised for ideological reasons. The bar and its student-run aspect personify Hertford – it is friendly and welcoming, open and cheap.”
Now that the motion has passed, some students are even considering leaving the college in protest.
“The bar was the reason I chose to go to Hertford” said Second Year PPEist Celia Carr. “Now there is nothing keeping me here.
“I am going to apply to move to Balliol where there is a better bar. At least ten people are also planning to do so,” she said.
Yet some are not so dismissive of the proposals. Hannah Pollard, a Second Year commented, “We shouldn’t dismiss it without considering the plans, though I’m not happy with the way the decision process was carried out without the consultation of the JCR. It was all done on the quiet.”
When contacted by a Cherwell reporter, the Dean of Hertford hung up the phone. The Principal was also not available for comment.
