MCR Mailing Lists
As a member of Downing MCR, you can get MCR-related emails via two channels: the weekly MCR newsletters sent to the college graduate student email list, and the opt-in MCR mailing list.
College Graduate Student List ("pgs at dow")
A weekly MCR newsletter is sent to all Downing graduate students via this list. You don't have to opt in to receive these emails, and you can't opt out, but the Newsletter is only sent out weekly (on Thursdays). We try to limit other messages to this list as much as possible.
All graduate students at Downing should be on the central college-run mailing list, but it has come to our attention that a significant number of people have slipped through the net somewhere in the college offices. If you suspect you aren't on this mailing list, for example if you are not receiving the weekly MCR Newsletter and lots of other messages from college, please contact Camilla d'Angelo immediately!
Opt-in MCR Email List ("dow-mcr at lists")
This is the mailing list you subscribe to using the form in the right-hand column of this website. This is used for extra emails like reminders of special events.
Graduate Union Bulletin List
This isn't specifically to do with Downing MCR, but as a member of the Grad Union you'll also get their weekly bulletins (which often have some overlap with the contents of the MCR Newsletter) and other notices. For more information, see the Grad Union bulletins page. You can individually unsubscribe yourself if you want.
How to Send Something to MCR Members
Email mcr-communications-officer@dow.cam.ac.uk if you have a message you'd like sent out.
We get a lot of emails every day, both from inside and outside college, asking us to advertise things to MCR members. This is fine, and we will always do our best to pass your message on. However, please bear the following things in mind:
- No matter how important you think your message is, we're almost certainly going to put it in our weekly MCR Newsletter rather than sending a separate email.
- The MCR Newsletter only goes out every Thursday, so you might need to allow some extra time for your advert to reach people. As a rough guide, the absolute minimum would be about a week ahead of any event.
- If your message arrives too late to get in the Newsletter before the message goes 'out of date', tough. You should've advertised earlier - remember, we're not going to send individual 'emergency' messages out.
- We won't forward attachments, of any type, under any circumstances. All messages should be in the form of plain text. Filling up people's email quotas on the off-chance that they're interested is bad manners.
- Given the above, you're very welcome to send us a PDF of some kind of printed advert that we can post on the notice board in the MCR room. It'd be more polite to print it out yourself and post it to us - pay for your own printing!
- If you do send us some kind of printable advert, be sure to include the same details in the body of the email as well. Emails saying "See attachment for details" will result in your message swiftly going in the bin - we aren't going to extract and retype the event details for you.
- We can distribute files electronically using the Downloads page of this website if necessary. This is mostly for things which aren't going to go out of date in a few days - unlike one-off event adverts.
- To make the Newsletter look tidy, we'll probably edit out any highlighting, underlining with asterisks, overly spread-out formatting, profuse capitalisation and any other excessive styling.
- Include a contact name, email address and (if appropriate) pigeon-hole details! It's amazing how many people forget to do that. Writing "reply to this email" or "email me if interested" will only result in the MCR Communications Officer getting all of your replies!
- Don't ask us to send a list of names or numbers of people back to you unless you've previously contacted us about it. Do your own event ticketing!
- Write your own text! Don't send requests along the lines of "Please could you advertise XYZ?". The answer is yes, but you must write the advert yourself.
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Useful Links
Graduate Union Website
Official College Website
Downing JCR Website
Central University Website
Facebook Pages
MCR Facebook Page
Facebook Events Group
Sign up here to join the opt-in MCR mailing list:
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Please email comments and corrections to the MCR Communications Officer, Camilla.