CHAIRPERSON:
Being Chairperson is, at first sight, easy: it often seems that all is involved
is choosing an agenda and then steering the way through the weekly General Meeting
without upsetting too many people - or the Students' Union. In fact the Chairperson
is responsible for the actual day-to-day running of the society and may be called
upon to perform any number of functions, including liaison with University departments
and with the public; helping with publicity; projecting films when other projectionists
are unavailable; representing the society at Union events and meetings; even cleaning out
G-box - in fact, any job that needs doing when other members are unwilling or unavailable.
Sometimes the task seems thankless but it can reap huge rewards for a genuinely committed
person - and the jobs cover such a wide area (people, information and machinery) that the
work is constantly interesting.
The current Chairman of OFU is MATTHEW SHEPPARD. Matt is a first year CIT student.
SECRETARY:
Being Secretary is almost as much hard work as being Chairperson - in fact when the Chairperson
tires of a job, (s)he may well dump it onto the Secretary. The Secretary's input to the society
is often much more obvious than the Chairperson's, since the Secretary is responsible for producing
the minutes of all society meetings, which are distributed to all members. Once again, the Secretary
can actually end up doing all sorts of jobs and often acts as a backup to the Chairperson in matters
such as dealing with enquiries from the general public or from University officials.
The current Secretary of OFU is DANNY
DIXON.
TREASURER:
The most exciting job! The Treasurer is responsible for looking after all the society's funds, including
money held in Union accounts and cash taken as membership fees. In the case of a society like OFU, this
may involve large transactions and hence the Treasurer must be a very reliable and trustworthy person.
The Treasurer is also responsible for producing a budget at the beginning of each year, and a set of
accounts at the end. On some rare occasions, the Treasurer is even allowed to spend some money on supporting
relevant trips and visits, e.g. tours of the projection facilities of a major cinema.
The current Treasurer of OFU is PAUL
WRIGHT (an ex-chair suffering from ex-chair syndrome)
Other committee positions available are Librarian, (most recently Jenny Saunders) who is responsible for ensuring that films are delivered and returned to the distributor on time; Film Booking Officer, who contacts the distributors once or twice a semester to book the season of films ahead; the Refreshments Officer (Nook Ruckitana) who prepares and serves refreshments to visitors to the University Arts Cinema; and the Publicity Officer (Jolyon Hunter), who masterminds, prepares and prints the publicity campaigns to encourage students to come to OFU showings.
