Dear Clare,

I am pleased to announce the nominations for the MCR Committee General Elections 2019.

The online voting will open on Saturday the 11th of May at 9am for 72 hours.

The list of candidates for available positions can be seen below, as well as the manifestos for Executive Positions.

Executive Positions

President

• Jonty Townson (nominated by Lydia Parkinson, seconded by Aneesh Naik)

Vice-President

• Daniel Whitaker (nominated by Andrea Paterlini, seconded by Jonty Townson)

Secretary

• Rouchelle Sriranjan (nominated by Daniel Muthukrishna, seconded by Paola Perrin-De-Brichambaut)

Treasurer

• Henri van Soest (nominated by Daniel Muthukrishna, seconded by Jonty Townson)

Bar Managers (x2)

• Will Wood (nominated by Lena Morrill, seconded by Daniel Muthukrishna)
• Tom Edinburgh (nominated by Andrea Paterlini, seconded by Sam Hodder)
• Pieter-Jan Sterenborg (nominated by Daniel Parle, seconded by Henri van Soest)

Social Secretary (x2)

• Stephen Trigg (nominated by Andrea Paterlini, seconded by Lydia Parkinson)
• Danny Parle (nominated by Andrea Paterlini, seconded by Calum Ashcroft)

Non-Executive Positions

Welfare (x2)

• Sam Hodder
• Ellie Dunstone

BME Officer

• Paola Velasco-Herrejón

Computing Officer

• Rouchelle Sriranjan

Clareity President

• Andrea Paterlini

Mature Students Officer

• Ada Lee

Quartermaster

• Navin Ramakrishna

Admiral of the Punts

• Calum Ashcroft

Exchanges Officer

• Yasmin Begum

Sports Officer

• Nick Taylor

Library Officer

• Peter Asimov

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Manifestos

President

Jonty Townson

For those who do not know me, I am Jonty, a PhD student in the department of Physiology, Development, & Neuroscience, where I work with flies.   

Clare is rightly renowned for being one of the friendliest colleges and the past year of bar managing has highlighted the importance of our MCR as a social hub and support base. As president I will continue to maintain an open and inclusive environment. I will listen carefully to the views of all MCR members and of the committee and hope to achieve greater participation in the community by retaining the current variety of events and encouraging more people to come forward with new ideas or even to put on their own events!

I believe my experience as bar manager will be useful for knowing who to speak to in college and how to get things done in the best possible way for the MCR. Renovations to Old Court will inevitably present challenges and I will work to make sure the MCR is affected as little as possible.

I am excited by the idea of becoming your MCR president and I hope you will be happy to have me working with the committee and representing the Clare community for you.

Vice President

Dan Whitaker

Dan was born and raised in the west of Philadelphia, where he spent the majority of his calendar year on the playground. This time was spent mostly chilling out, relaxing and maxing which was cool, though he notes that he often enjoyed a game of basketball outside of his educational establishment. His life was changed dramatically when two ill-motivated men began to wreak havoc in his community and due to a fearful mother he was forced to relocate to an upper middle class neighborhood in LA.

In all seriousness though; my name is Dan and I think that most of you will know me already. I have been the MCR Green Officer for the last year and during that time I have continued some of the amazing initiatives put in place by previous Green Offers (such as the green-cycle space) while also helping to found the Clare Sustainable Investment Society and re-found the Clare Allotment Society. If elected to the role of Vice-President I will continue to forward green agendas both at the college and at the University as a whole. In recent months more and more people have realised that if we want to save our planet we need to make radical changes and make them fast. Clare College has for a long time considered itself one of the most forward-thinking of the ancient colleges, we are proud to have been one of the first three male colleges to admit women, and we are proud to be consistently named one of the greenest colleges by the green impact awards. I am not proud however, that the college still has a large percentage of its endowment invested in fossil fuel companies through an investment manager that votes against environmental actions at shareholder meetings more than 30% of the time. As such I will continue to push for full divestment of Clare’s endowment. I will also actively work to re-align our MCRs voting strategy to be more in keeping with the modern colleges. A vote for me is a vote towards a greener, more accountable college and a politically engaged MCR.

Secretary

Rouchelle Sriranjan

Hi all!

I’m Rouchelle and am a Cardiology Registrar. I’ve snuck into the Clare MCR under pretext of undertaking a PhD in medicine.  You can usually find me lurking around the cardiology wards in Addenbrookes poised to charm the next willing patient into my study.

I’ve decided to run for the MCR secretary/IT officer post in order to hopefully play a role in revamping our wonderful (relic of a) website. Having worked on website development committees previously in Cambridge and Harvard, I hope to use this experience to work together with the college to take the Clare MCR website forward. The ultimate aim will be to make the website more accessible, user friendly and efficient. I’m proud to be a part of Clare’s diverse and vibrant MCR, which is easily one of the University’s best and believe it deserves a website that is befitting of this status.

Finally until we get a revamp and have to work with what we have, when things occasionally crash  – I will aim to resolve these with the efficiency and the good-naturedness of the red and rotund Sri-Lankan ghost crab (the most efficient mess cleaner I know). ​

BW

Rouchelle

Treasurer

Henri van Soest

Hello everyone!

My name is Henri van Soest. I am a first-year PhD student in Land Economy. This past year, I have been around the MCR fairly often, mostly as bartender. Despite several attempts at bribing me into giving bar discounts, most notably by Thomas Espaas, no attempt has succeeded. This surely provides enough proof that the MCR treasure would be in safe hands under my tenure.   

A substantial part of the MCR budget currently goes underused. I will bring solid accounting standards into the game (UK GAAP it up), so we can use the MCR resources more efficiently. I will also be more open about the budget during the year and point out opportunities where money is available, and I will encourage suggestions on how that money should be spent.

I will increase the focus on welfare-related spending. Cambridge is a stressful place and having a good MCR community is an important aspect of university welfare. I have been very lucky to find such a welcoming atmosphere at the Clare MCR when I arrived in this strange and foreign land, and I would like to keep it that way for next year’s arrivals. I will coordinate with the welfare officers, social secs and bar managers to make sure that the MCR welfare budget is used in a targeted and effective way.

Even though Cambridge often feels like a bubble, I believe we should be aware of our place in society and the environment. As a treasurer, I will sit on the investment and finance committees. This enables me to interact with the college fellows and staff on the direction of the college. This unique opportunity for engagement has been underused in the past. On these committees, I will increase engagement with the college on sustainability, community outreach and financial responsibility.

I look forward to the opportunity of serving as your next MCR treasurer. Thank you for reading!

Henri

Bar Manager

Will Wood

Hello all! I am Will Wood, a third year graduate student here in the MCR, and for the past few months I have had the distinct privilege of being one of your bar-managers along-side Jonty. It really has been a good amount of fun, and admittedly a source of pride for me to see the bar full and buzzin’ like on many occasions.

You might know me from things such as:

• Kegs!

• ＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ That stupid e-mail you get every week ˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

• Weird cocktails

• Vegan Baileys

• Some surprisingly decent cocktails

• A slightly more down-to-earth selection of beers, ie making sure we have a good selection of “normal” beer and not just the rose quartz infused chocolate aloe vera spiced porters.

I believe that having one bar-manager who already knows the ropes is a huge advantage. It certainly made things much smoother to have Jonty there when I took up the role, and I would very much like to pay that favour on.

If you would do me the honour of re-electing me, I shall endeavour to:

• Continue my commitment to the ongoing existence of the bar, making sure we don’t fall foul of College but also making sure to stick up for, what is quite frankly, an integral part of our community.

• Organise more keg nights! (Return of the Keglets)

• Trial a new regular cocktail menu of 3 or so drinks using some nifty cocktail shakers that make it all very easy for bar staff (they’re not weird, honest!). Also some non-alcoholic “mocktails” for those who do not partake.

• Continue the good work with the new social secretaries to bring you fantastic themed and fun events.

• Ensure the bar is friendly and inclusive, for members both old and new, regular and infrequent.

• Continue to listen to what people want from their bar. I believe having an active role in working behind the bar is important to keeping a good “lay of the land” on this front.

• Ensure the bar quizzes keep going into the next year.

• Make sure we reliably have wine available for purchase before each formal.

• Work with the other bar-manager to ensure the bar continues to be the friendly, engaging and just generally brilliant place that it deserves to be, whomever they should be, and help them with their own ideas for the bar.

If this sounds good to you, then vote Will because Will Wood.

Well, whichever way you decide to vote, thank you all for letting me be one of your guardians of the booze the past few months, it was truly very special for me. <3

Thank you.

Tom Edinburgh

The bar is a central social hub and heartbeat of college life and I hope you’ve all had a lot of fun there this year. I’m keen for that to continue, so here’s a few things I’d like to explore and (hopefully) implement if elected:

• introducing discounts on one or two drinks rotating on a weekly/fortnightly basis (subject to continuing bar profitability)
• potentially stocking more unusual alcohol, possibly combined with discounts (e.g. if anyone is passionate about a particular alcohol from home that they’d like the bar to consider ordering)
• introducing more perks for bar workers, such as optional stash and occasional bar socials
• making use of what I’m learning in my degree by deep learning new and exciting drink combinations, e.g. https://aiweirdness.com/post/181110592232/dont-let-a-neural-net-mix-drinks (I am obviously joking about this, or at least mostly joking)
• continuing work with various committee reps and societies in organising a wide variety of events, talks and general fun in the bar (fairly vague but the general idea is inclusivity and making sure the bar caters to everyone as well as doing excellent post formal drinks)

Finally, admin stuff is a fairly unexciting policy for a manifesto but it’s a pretty crucial part of the bar manager’s role. I have experience in a handful of committees and from supervising, so I think I’m reasonably good at it.

I realise I don’t know a lot of you as well as I’d like so here’s the obligatory manifesto introduction, but at the end instead:

Hi, I’m Tom and I’m a first year PhD student in DAMTP, having returned to Clare after four years here and a year away. I work with physiological data from the intensive care unit, using stats and machine learning and other things I hope to actually understand one day, with the broad goal of transforming the data so it’s more useful and interpretable for a clinician. I also run a lot and I’m in Colonel Spanky’s Love Ensemble.

PS congrats/thanks if you’ve read every manifesto. I like that.

Pieter-Jan Sterenborg

Dear Clare MCR,

For those who do not know me, my name is Pieter-Jan, but I answer to Pieter, PJ, or any variation one might wish to conjure up. I’m from the Netherlands, the land of the freakishly tall, and I’m currently a first-year PhD student in History. Despite often hitting my head on the low doorway of the MCR, I have found it to be one of the most welcoming and inclusive environments in Cambridge. Our bar plays a vital role in fostering this amazing atmosphere, and as one of our bar managers, I will strive to maintain it that way.

History shows that revolutions often turn on themselves and end in tyranny (nor do tyrants tend to have a good time afterwards, just ask Robespierre). Therefore, even though appropriate banners and hats have been prepared, I don’t think I need to run on a platform to ‘make the

Clare MCR-bar great again’. The bar is already great and even if you decide to not vote for me, it will still be pretty great. If elected as one of our bar managers, however, I promise to try to make it just a little bit greater.

I will introduce the concept of ‘beer of the week’ and ‘beer of the night’, tying it to specific formals and events the same way the bar already has special cocktail menus. Furthermore, I will always be open to suggestions and implement them where possible. Most importantly, I will aim to relieve you of stress and anxiety by supplying you all with plenty of Dutch courage throughout the coming year!

Cheers!

Social Secretary

Stephen Trigg

Many of you might refer to me as the Man with No Name (probably not true), although I’m certainly not as ruggedly handsome as Eastwood. Most of you will remember me as the person invariably wearing some shade of black (probably true), but I’m not as cool as Cash. All of you should know I aim to make the next year the most memorable of your years at Clare.

For those of you who still can’t place who I am, I’m Stephen, a second year PhD student in Biochemistry studying bacterial metabolism. I’m pretty good at remembering who people are and what they do (“You’re a creep” – Ester Gurnari) and I’m eager to talk about anything or nothing at all (“Your conversations are like bad improv” – Aneesh Naik), skills that every good social sec should have.

Being a member of Clare as made my time so far in Cambridge truly spectacular, with Friday night formals undoubtedly being a big part of social life within the MCR. These events have allowed me to get to know such a beautifully diverse group of people that I would not have encountered anywhere else, and I’m keen to not only continue this experience with our existing members, but to be a part of providing this for our incoming Freshers too.

I would also like to work with the bar managers, exchange officer and the MCR community to provide more events that don’t always involve getting togged up and having to pretend you usually eat that gracefully. Potential events: Hidden Talent, How far can you throw a NERF Vortex Mega Football Aero Howler?, ‘Insert Music Genre’ Night.

If any of this doesn’t sound at all like your thing, let me know what your thing is!

 – Stephen

Danny Parle

Hi, my name is Danny and I am a first year PhD in Chemistry. One of my favourite parts of college life is formals so I am keen on getting involved and continue to make them the highlight of our week! I will aim to build on the success of our current social secs, in particular with the themed formals. As well as including some of the most popular themed formals we have had this year, I would like to bring in some new and hopefully unique formal experiences. I also plan on working alongside the bar staff to ensure Friday nights are the best nights of the year!

Aside from formals I will explore the possibility of other MCR events (in addition to the popular quiz nights etc.). I will ask the MCR community what events people would like to see in the MCR calendar. We might be able to include things like going to comedy shows and trips outside of the bubble that Cambridge can sometimes be.

I also really want to be part of fresher’s week to ensure that new members have a great start to college life and encourage them to engage with the MCR throughout their time at Clare.