The JCR - Junior Common Room
The JCR is essentially a common room which everyone at Peterhouse can use. Ours has recently been renovated, so is in quite good condition. Its facilities include a TV and VCR / DVD player, daily newspapers, sofas, board games, water cooler, coffee and soup machine, a quiet area for working / chilling out, and, most importantly, the only free pool table in Cambridge (as far as we know). The Peterhouse pool team is quite a formidable force in the inter-college competition (called 'Cuppers'), so all those hours spent 'practising' in the JCR count for something.
Some people use the JCR a lot, some people less so, but it is a good place to get away from work, relax, and get to know other people in the college. There are regularly updated notice boards covering a huge range of activities going on in college and beyond, and newspapers provided by the JCR committee. Plus it's open till the early hours of the morning, so it's where everyone always seems to end up once the bar stops serving!
Every undergraduate is a member of the JCR, which (confusingly) is also the name of a Cambridge college's undergraduate student union. The Peterhouse JCR, just to be special and even more confusing, is also known as 'The Sex Club', short for 'Sexcentenary Club' as it was founded back in 1857 when it was believed that the college was 600 years old (it has subsequently been discovered that the college was actually founded in 1284, not 1257). Most of the other colleges aren't 600 years old even now, so I guess it's just another thing drawing attention to the age of Peterhouse. Plus it makes people do a quick double take - 'it's called what?' The JCR committee is elected each year from students in all years of undergraduate study, and does all kinds of organising and campaigning for the students of Peterhouse. This ranges from demonstrating against top-up fees (not entirely successfully) to running the summer garden party. If you want to change pretty much anything in college you can talk to these people, or even better run for office yourself!
This alternative prospectus is just one of the myriad improvements made by the JCR to the lives of students at Peterhouse, both present and future!
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© Pete Davies, Sean Lip 2005-06
This website is operated by Peterhouse JCR. The views expressed are in no way the views of Peterhouse or the University of Cambridge.