Michaelmas term and elections

The US presidential election

I got to know the American election system quite well, as we talked about the election quite a few times. No wonder when one of my friends is American. Hence, I knew a lot about what Donald Trump said or what Hillary Clinton did. I even watched two out of three election debates. I heard why people want either of the candidate to become a president.

So after all of that and about a year of discussions (yes, we already talked about it a year ago), the election finally took place. Only a few people I know stayed up late see the progress, however, in the morning I could see how some people were sad or confused about the result and I reckon that the feelings around me were quite similar to those after Brexit. With regards to that, I have to quote a line I saw the night before the result: “Everyone seems to be so sure about the result that it resembles Brexit”.

Class list referendum

Class lists are a Cambridge tradition and as far as I know a tradition kept in Cambridge nowadays. It involves showing you final grade in the examinations on a notice board in front of a Senate House, one of the most important administrative buildings of the University of Cambridge. The decision to abolish Class lists was already made by the university last year, but some students were not satisfied with the fact that the University had not asked the students before. That is why they wanted to have and finally conducted a referendum.

Quite obviously there were two parties in the referendum. The NO supporters wanted to abolish the tradition, mostly because of concerns about the mental health as showing the results publicly “humiliated” the students with not-the-top marks. On the other hand, YES supporters wanted to keep the tradition with easier way how to opt-out. Their arguments included the “self-esteem” and in the week before the referendum a few articles about how the publicity of results can help people with problems.

To cut long story short, finally the referendum took place and YES won by 10 %. But whether it will have an impact on the decision of abolishing the Class lists is a question yet to answer.

JCR elections

For those not knowing about Cambridge, undergraduate students at particular college are represented by so called JCR (stands for Junior Common/Combination Room). JCR is managed by JCR committee, whose members represent different aspects of the student life at college. This time of the year, the vice-president, treasurer, accommodation officer, ents officer and access and disability officer were elected. The second election, filling the other half of the committee takes place in the following term.

The style of the election is quite close to the regular elections. Candidates write manifestos and you can meet them to talk about their policies in so called hastings. Some candidates even make a poster. After that the election itself takes place and new members are elected for a period of year.