Don’t let those Senior Common Room event invitations languish in your inbox!

All staff are allocated membership of a Senior Common Room (SCR) – a welcoming and inclusive idea instigated by Dr Benedict Douglas, Assistant Professor in Law and former SCR President at St John’s College. Benedict told Dialogue more about the thinking behind this initiative.

Benedict Douglas (right)

Community, interdisciplinarity, love. The fostering of these three things are, I think, the role of the Colleges within our University. Because staff need these things just as much as students, if you’ve started working here in the last three years, you will have become a member of a College.

Staff have always been able to join college Senior Common Rooms, but few did because they didn’t know Colleges were open to staff, didn’t know how fun they could be, or just didn’t have the time amongst all the other tasks you have to do on becoming a new member of staff.

So, back in 2018, with Thomas Pullman from the Colleges & Student Experience office, we decided to fix this. I went to the then-VC and suggested we make staff college membership automatic, with the option to opt out, applying Nudge Theory to get round the reasons why staff don’t join Colleges.

Colleges bring students from across the county, country and world together in a community which gives them the opportunity to meet lots of people. By living with lots of people, they can make friends, join or invent clubs and play sports. Staff can similarly arrive in Durham not knowing anyone, and SCRs are a way to make friends or just meet someone new or interesting.

By throwing people studying different things together in one place, Colleges give students and staff the ability to meet people from different departments or offices. I met Rebecca Eves of Marketing and Communications at a formal dinner in College, and she encouraged me to write this article. Colleges are inherently designed to increase inter-disciplinarity, and help us share and develop our ideas and University.

It is regularly reported that 72% of Durham students end up married to each other, compared to 20% of students at other universities. I don’t think SCRs should/could try to match that quite frankly intimidating statistic – perhaps the person we like most will not be found in a university. But they are a place to get to know people, and I’d be a bit sad if this change in University policy did not result in more relationships.

So SCRs have lots of new members and are going to be working on helping them feel part of their College community. Not everyone will want or be able to go to all the events, but there will be something for everyone. And if there isn’t, one of the best things about Durham Colleges is that we’re, on the whole, not ossified in tradition. So if you’re a new member, staff or student, and there’s something you’d like your college to do or get people together for (a day trip to Whitby, curate a Wine Cellar, celebrate Norway’s Constitution Day...) you now have a community in which you can make it happen.