From the Editors:
Each week, The Bi-College News will be publishing the Students’ Council meeting minutes released in the Students’ Council Newsletter. These meeting minutes come directly to the inboxes of all Haverford students; in the interests of making the minutes and the activities of the College’s student government as accessible and transparent as possible, they are likewise published here, where the Bryn Mawr community, along with Bi-Co faculty, staff, alumni, and others can see the Council‘s discourse. The Haverford Clerk has been publishing these minutes in a series since 2019; head to their website to read past releases.
Executive Board Meeting 10/03
Friday, October 3rd, 2025; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102
Members Present: Ben Fligelman, Sarah Weill-Jones, Oliver Wilson, Grant DeVries, Ben Perez-Flesler, Victoria Haber, Caroline Yao
Members Absent: Sophia Goss
Guests: Darren Belanger, Isabela Azumatan Aceituno
Next Meeting: Friday, October 3rd; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102
“Haverford parties are not the place to be.” -Anon
- Call to order
- Roll Call
- Adoption of Agenda
- Fords Form
- Old Business:
- Thank you to our wonderful treasurers for finishing Regular Budgeting!!
- New Business 1: Quaker Bouncers invited to Exec Board
- What do the Quaker Bouncers need?
- Alcohol Policy
- New Business 2: Amy Miller visits us and gives some updates regarding Community Housing
- Adjournment
Call to Order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 4:17pm.
Victoria: More than half of Exec board is in attendance. Quorum has been met.
Sarah: I move to adopt the agenda. I also move to approve the minutes. Any concerns? The agenda is adopted and the minutes are approved.
Fords Form
Victoria: The Fords Form is as follows:
“I noticed in last week’s EB minutes the quote “We will either make a list of concerns and address them peacefully or we might end up writing a Plenary Resolution some time in the next couple of weeks.” This is very amusing. I would like to submit for StuCo’s consideration that Quaker-inspired structured dialogue should, in fact, be considered a peaceful method of addressing concerns.”
Sarah: Thank you for submitting!
Ben Flig: And we love you!
Community Comment
Victoria: Guests, please say your names for the minutes.
Isabela: I’m Isabela, I’m a Quaker Bouncer Co-Head. (I’m also a JSAAPP Co-Head, but attending today as a Quaker Bouncer.)
Darren: I am also a Quaker Bouncer Co-Head.
New Business 1: Quaker Bouncers invited to Exec Board
Ben Flig: Before we start, I wanna thank the Co-Treasurers for their dedication. I’ve seen them working hard trying to fund all of the clubs consistently and responsibly.
Sarah: Thank you for joining us. We’ve been talking a lot about Quaker Bouncers. This loops into our conversation about how Haverford will tackle the alcohol policy, party host training and how to make parties safer. I have heard second hand that Quaker Bouncers want to find ways to make parties safe, but also to ensure the ability to have the capacity for Quaker Bouncers at these parties. Some students may be asked to reschedule or cancel a party. Can you tell me more about this process and how you plan to improve your programming and what we can do for you?
Darren: I wouldn’t say the idea is to have a party not to happen. Parties that don’t have Quaker Bouncer are successful regardless, but especially with the email that we got a couple of weeks ago. And generally I’m always looking for ways to make Quaker Bouncers more useful. We’re a student-run organization and we don’t have a ton of supervision from admin so we don’t always have a defined role.
Sarah: Do you feel like you have enough tools to make the parties safer?
Isabela: One of our biggest things is that we wanted to expand training. We do our own training. We don’t have professionals come in. We take it upon ourselves to train ourselves and get more tools, but we want to get more official training. We did an optional training called Bringing in the Bystander and that was very beneficial and we want more of that for Quaker Bouncers.
Darren: We have our direct supervisor, Ciera Ismail, the Assistant Director of Student Engagement, and we have our first meeting with her this Monday. Hopefully, we will bring that up about additional training. We just did our training with the new Bouncers and we presented slides about alcohol recognition, sexual and harassment recognition and deescalation.
Sarah: How many Quaker Bouncers do you currently have?
Darren: We hired 12 more recently, so we have 33 members.
Sarah: That’s amazing, I’m glad to hear that number. I’m concerned in hearing the college hasn’t given you formal training and you’re left on your own devices. That concerns me since you’re students. It’s really good that you’ve gotten the Bringing in the Bystander training. I’d also recommend receiving Party Host training. Outside of training resources, are there other resources you need to be more successful?
Darren: I don’t see a lot other than training. We have celebrated 21 years of Quaker Bouncers. It started in 2004.
Oliver: Quaker Bouncers can drink now!
Ben Flig: Quaker Bouncers are the age of seniors at this college.
Isabel: They’re my age so…basically we share a birthday.
Sarah: That’s cute.
Darren: Anyways, it’s always been student run, so the administration has never had a lot of control over it. It’s always been whatever students have had the capacity to help each other with.
Isabela: Also, our last co-head Be Storie rebuilt the Quaker Bouncer from COVID years because there were a lot of changes. The co-heads previous to her didn’t guide her as much during the transition so she kind of had to build the Quaker Bouncers from nothing again. She did a great job but she was doing it alone. We’re trying to revamp it a little more.
Ben Flig: In regards to the ways that Quaker Bouncers have changed, from COVID to rebuilding, I’m curious if you can give more historical context on what Quaker Bouncers used to do like roving patrols. What is the evolution?
Darren: I was very impressed reading this article from 2006 there’s a lot that has stayed the same. I think the basics of the role is that: you check IDs at the door, you have roaming people at the party to look for alcohol overuse and any suspicious activity, and the eyes and ears to campus safety–if there’s anything concerning you let them know. That’s what we essentially train. We’re not training professionals so when in doubt, we call campus safety. It’s better than having Campus Safety present at the parties.
That hasn’t changed a whole lot. I was just going through the drive, and there was a past activity of signing up with a buddy, and doing a two hour roaming shift, where you walk around to each of the parties to make sure that things are under control but not necessarily stationed at a single party.
Ben PF: Could you get the golf carts?
Victoria: I know students who work in Campus Safety get to drive those, so that would be helpful to inquire about.
Sarah: Bringing back roaming shifts would be helpful. We’re trying to come up with ways to incentivize people using Quaker Bouncers. We think it would make parties safe, which is a concern right now. We got a Fords Form about it last week. Even if 19 or 22 or Drinker doesn’t ask you there, students will know that there’s Quaker Bouncers at least around roaming if they need it. I think that would give some peace of mind even if they’re not at a party. The majority of parties are successful regardless of Quaker Bouncer presence. What do you guys think about what should be done for the minority of parties?
Darren: We get the party reports about where people have reserved parties. We have not been asked to any parties in the last two weeks. That’s never happened in my time. But I’m looking at six that happened during those weeks and said no, Quaker Bouncers are not needed. That’s not really answering the question but another piece of evidence regarding “How could we be more of a presence” without necessarily disrupting party culture that has happened without us?
Ben Flig: Regarding the list, I wonder if it might be good to publicize that list somewhere. I know some parties are for closed events, so publishing may not be what they want, but I’m curious what you think about publicizing parties that are more public.
Darren: We have a Quaker Bouncers Instagram so that was an idea that I had as a freshman. It seemed like people knew about parties that I did not have a direct connection to know about. I don’t know what that would do for safety. I’m not sure if it would be helping the safety concerns there. There are a variety of things that are not specified in this form.
Sarah: What do you think would help incentivize students using Quaker Bouncers more?
Isabela: We’ve thought about this for a while. We made the Quaker Bouncers the defaults on the Event Managing System (EMS). We talked to the Campus Safety Student Advisory Committee. We do give reports and get reports from Campus Safety.
Darren: Campus Safety has access to reports that we write about attendance and problems that happen.
Isabela: When people register for parties they are supposed to fill out a form, but that hasn’t happened recently.
Sarah: Campus Safety hasn’t followed up with these yet?
Isabela: I’m not sure who is supposed to send the report, or if it’s made, so Jodi said she will follow up on that during the meeting. So if the Quaker Bouncers are there they can fill it out for you is an incentive we were thinking about.
Sarah: People really don’t like filling out paperwork.
Isabela: Exactly. Also one of our new Quaker Bouncers is on the lax team and she’s been telling her team to have us present at their parties too.
Darren: We do enforce limits at James House, which is necessary, but annoying for those who want to get into parties. We don’t have glass bottles inside because if it breaks that’s unsafe. So I understand that there are communities that don’t invite Quaker Bouncers for these reasons, and if they believe that they have a functioning party hosting atmosphere, I understand that, but I also have wondered if there is a way to adjust what the role looks like for different party spaces.
Sarah: Is it potentially beneficial to get Quaker Bouncers and party hosts in the same room to talk about what could be improved upon together?
Darren: I think during my time that’s happened once. Every year the leadership changes, but that could be helpful about getting on the same page and seeing why are people not asking for us.
Sarha: I think a conversation would be good – without acquisition but understanding. If StuCo could help you arrange it could be good.
Ben Flig: Something I want to come back to is the changing goals. How do you understand the Quaker Bouncers role being different?
Isabela: I think that our role is flexible depending on the host. We take a lot of direction from them–if it’s open to the Tri-Co, if they want us checking IDs, and other things. I’ve been to parties where they didn’t want us checking IDs so we didn’t but we were on standby. We can be there without interfering with the party scene. We can be there for students that may need or want us there.
Sarah: Are Quaker Bouncers trained to use narcane?
Isabela: We are not as a group. We have requested to have narcane but Campus Safety said we needed training, but they said that did not fall under our role.
Darren: There’s been lots of discussions about different hazards like someone choking. You won’t call Campus Safety and have them there in time to help. We’ve talked about what first aid training for Quaker Bouncers could look like. There were Quaker Bouncers last year that thought they would get first aid training and did not, just because we don’t provide that.
Isable: At the end of her term here, Be talked about getting CPR and First Aid training. I’m not sure where those conversations left off.
Sarah: Bryn Mawr is having an open training for First Aid and CPR training in the second half of the semester as a PE credit.
Ben PF: Bryn Mawr has some kind of EMS program as part of their student budget. I don’t know how it works but they get a significant amount of funding for it. We could try to put you guys in contact with them, the name says it’s Bi-Co, I imagine that’s historically and not in recent years but maybe a partnership worth reviving.
Isabel: I think it could be beneficial to get all the board members trained, because we are the point people. Those are the trainings we want more of to bring people in.
Sarah: I know you have historical budgeting. Is that student wages or can it be put towards training?
Isabela: We don’t actually know much about that. We’ve asked Jodi to tell us the hours we are allocated, but we’ve never gone over it to our knowledge.
Oliver: In fall of last year, you were significantly under. So there would be leftovers for you to do training. Jodi should now have more real time data about hours being logged because Workday is more functional. I would follow up on that soon.
Darren: About our budget, we’ve always assumed that we’re always significantly under and we’ve talked to Jodi about getting access to our budget. So that’s ongoing.
Isabela: We’ve never known about how much we’ve spent.
Darren: We hope to get shirts again. But we just have conversations about getting the thing, not the money itself.
Isbela: Whenever we would request things, we would just email and they would show up.
Darren: If we want more of a consistent budget for training which I think is what we’re getting to, then we would like to know more details about our budget.
Ben Flig: I’m curious about the alcohol policy. I know Isabela you come as JSAAPP. I want to know what you think about the policy. Does it need to go under revision? What are your thoughts?
Isabela: We’ll be revising it a little to reflect our current practices. A lot of the JSAAPP roles don’t really exist anymore because our roles have been delegated to other things. It says that JSAAPP does a presentation at Customs but we don’t do that anymore because it’s on the online orientation. It’s generally outdated. We haven’t made changes yet though.
Ben Flig: That’s fine, it can happen in spring plenary.
Isabela: But yes we have the intention to make changes.
Ben Flig: I’m excited to hear more about the Alcohol Policy and have it be a bigger part of student life. We talk a lot about parties at Haverford and one of my hopes is that we can think about them in a way that they fit into student life as a whole.
Sarah: It’s safe to say the importance socially of these parties so that’s why we care so much about making these parties safe for all students. We appreciate your dedication to keeping parties safe.
Darren: We’ll bring this all up with Ciera. Regarding the strategic plan intending to tear down James House, it’s hard to reckon with because I think the house is important for a lot of non-athlete parties to happen there. If there is no James House, then a new space will need to be made for student parties. I personally hate Lunt basement and that might be the next popular location for parties.
Isabel: One thing that came up with my meeting with Scott Wojciechowski, Dean of Student Life, in a JSAAPP meeting is that during COVID they had tents at parties. I think it’d be so lovely if we still did that.
Ben PF: Facilities definitely still have those tents so we could potentially do that.
Sarah: Cleanup would be easier and people won’t be in your personal space.
Ben PF: Capacity issues too, that’d be solved.
Darren: We have issues sometimes with air flow and people entering and exiting from the back, so that’d be great.
Ben Flig: I think the campus plan to tear down James house is bad. We should talk to the strategic planning people.
Victoria: Long live the student murals.
Sarah: I don’t see why we can’t renovate the house.
Ben PF: It’s because it’s easier to put a bigger building there in the space it’s in, it’s in a very valuable location on campus where they’d want to put a new dorm.
Isabela: if they tear it down, they should build some sort of equivalent.
Sarah: I feel like oftentimes these new spaces are stuffy and students won’t be able to let loose and relax.
Isabela: It should be built with parties in mind!
Darren: The last thing I’d say is that sometimes we get asked about working for Lloyd Green which is tough to check IDs for. Sometimes at apartment basement parties, not doing door duty but roaming duty, which is hard to keep track of people for. Additionally, there were some high schoolers dressed in crazy outfits and at night just running around… So it was wild how that can just happen? Like, what are you doing here? Haverford parties may not be…the place…to be… for that.
Sarah: Well, thank you for coming Darren and Isabela!
Amy Miller visits us and gives some updates regarding Community Housing
Sarah: Hi Amy, thanks for coming!
Victoria: I know that we talked previously during our Community Housing budgeting meeting. But now that we are in a different context, we can have this conversation on the minutes! For the sake of the minutes, please state your name and role here at Haverford.
Amy: My name is Amy Miller, I use she/her pronouns. I work in Student Life as the Residential Education Coordinator for students. This means I work with residence halls for sophomores, juniors, and seniors and also community housing. I also oversee residential life processes like room draw.
Victoria: Thank you. Ben, how would you frame the conversations we have been having most recently?
Ben Flig: What I would say is we have been talking about the way affinity houses are funded and how we treat residential housing for returning students. Affinity houses are in a unique position because they are certainly closer to campus than traditional dorm based housing like Lloyd or Kim but they’re also not exactly like the apartments, and so traditionally, affinity housing has received funding for cleaning supplies which is a little different. Facilities can come into community housing as well, which is different from the apartments where those spaces aren’t cleaned. There is a question in some regards of fairness; how can we best serve our affinity houses and maintain fairness. What are your thoughts and opinions on that:?
Ben PF: It’s also complicated because some affinity houses are in the apartments and some are not in the apartments, there’s not actually a very clear line there. However, I know Student Life has been working to try to get the remaining affinity groups a house of their own on College Circle, which is great – this is part of the 2030 plan, so it should be a priority for the college.
Ben Flig: For instance, PANA is an apartment where the LCC is a house on College Circle.
Amy: Good news, it’s not the first time we’ve talked about this issue. I started at Haverford in June of 2024, and there were constant themes of questions around this. I’ll share what I know in the year and more that I’ve been here.
I believe some of this predates my time here. I’ve gathered as much as I can. One thing I can share is that historically funding came from two sources: StuCo and the Office of Residential Life. Over time that has shifted. The budget was only from StuCo and the reasoning for that was because of increased costs in the office of student life, particularly Customs. We cover the cost of meals for the first years before the meal plans starts. So if you think about the number of students on campus and the number of meals prior to the start of the semester, that’s a lot of money. Our budget didn’t increase, so our spending had to go down elsewhere.
Another piece of context that I learned is that the community house funding used to be split between spending for programs and spending for house related items. That funding was something Scott had supported for some time. It was discontinued due to budgetary constraints. I’ve talked to Diamond Howell-Shields, Director of The Office of Race and Ethnicity Education, a little bit about how we can improve parity for these houses. So the funding that we provide to the houses, the allocation that any affinity houses receive is intended to go towards purchases for programs.
There’s also a point about what facilities and housekeeping can do. When I receive a complaint or concern about things in the house, I’m able to submit work orders. Last year in the LCC there was facilities work that happened right outside and inside the house. There were employees unintentionally bringing dirt into the house and it brought questions about getting a tread or a mat. Similarly last year PANA had asked about getting trashcans, and I was able to do that. If there’s a consistent concern regarding cleaning, I meet weekly with facilities on Tuesdays and I can talk about that.
Ben Flig: I appreciate that. I am curious, Victoria and Caroline, what do you think about this?
Victoria: Once again, we talked briefly about this on our own. I’ve been in communication with a couple of other residents in other houses and some were confused around the differences between community versus affinity group houses. I feel like we ask this every year, but if you could explicitly define the difference between community and affinity housing that would be great.
Amy: I’d be happy to. Community houses is a catch-all term to define all identity-based houses. Colloquially they’re referred to as affinity houses or interest based houses. Overall we have 11 community houses, which is up from 9. We had one interest house, Diabesties, that did not return. We have three brand new ones that launched this year: E-Haus, Folk House, and Women’s Health House.
There are some differences in how these houses function and what their needs are.
The needs might differ depending on the house layout, amenities that are provided already, individual needs. I will also share that in the spring 2025, we launched the community house leader position and that has helped me establish a point of contact going into each semester with understanding what the goals are for each house.
I feel very indebted to StuCo last year. We charted out a different path for that context. We mimic what the Co-Treasurers do, where we have each house leader submit budget requests for events and then I will allocate funds. That helped me better understand what budgeting needs are for each house.
Victoria: Thank you for sharing all that. This is still something we have to clarify each year because sometimes people are still confused. One thing that you mentioned is differences in amenities. How does cleaning work? How is it determined which spaces facilities will enter into and not? Is there a distinction?
Amy: Yes, there are areas in each house that are private to residents like the upper floors. In QHouse they have a common gathering area on the first floor and I believe there’s also a single person bathroom on the first floor. As you go up to the higher floors there are private residential areas, which are the spaces not cleaned by facilities.
Their jobs include trash removal and replenishing toilet paper. If that’s not happening, I want to know that. Students are also empowered to submit work orders if that’s not being done. Additionally, Cadbury is not a community house, but it’s a standalone house and 12 students are still living there. Trash there still needs to be taken out, so facilities will still go there. I want to hear when there are challenges, so I would encourage students with concerns around standards with services to come talk to me. I promise I won’t be offended, I’m here to help.
Victoria: You mentioned how starting this semester, because of community house leaders doing early budgeting, you can more intentionally and effectively allocate funding. Would you say then that going down the line, we might keep the same model of $1,000 for affinity houses and $100 for interest based houses, or that you will allocate funds based on what students ask for?
Amy: Probably that second option. The allocations I made for the semester shows a lot of parity between what the houses are receiving. Some are getting less than what I expected. There are a couple that are asking for less and some ask for more that I’ve also been able to meet. Students’ Council has also helped with funding as well based on the feedback we got last year. I think the programs are phenomenal as well, so I feel like this model, which came from conversations with Students’ Council last year, is more accurately meeting student needs. My goal is always to understand what each house is achieving this semester and how I can help with that.
The beauty is that this isn’t set in stone. I’m working on finalizing a community house guidebook and the goal of that is to take these policies and procedures in writing. That will also be a living document. The idea is not that student life is imposing rules and policies, but there are common things we run up against like catering and food policies. I even thought about having house leaders at the Meeting of the Clubs.
Victoria: Thank you so much. I feel that this is a lot of closure from last year, so we appreciate it.
Ben Flig: I adjourn this meeting at 5:15pm.
General Body Meeting 10/05
Sunday, October 5, 2025; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101
Members Present: Ben Fligelman, Sarah Weill-Jones, Oliver Wilson, Grant DeVries, Ben Perez-Flesler, Sophia Goss, Victoria Haber, Coco Liu, Elena Vol, Isabela Azumatan Aceituno, Vivian Ross, Conner McWhan, Anjali Agarwal, Jonathan Lee, Zora Kuehne, Isaac Kemokai, Julie Edelstein, Esme Dorsey, Ian Trask, Zoe Hartmann, Pratyusha Katiyar, Hannah Mattison, Chris O’Conner, Abigail Trapp, Leo Ni,
Members Absent: Caroline Yao, Jack Weinstein, Jackson Cannon, Hettie Van Dyke, Ben Fitzgerald, Michael Pyo, Sofie Quirk
Guests: N/A
Next Meeting: Sunday, October 26; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101
“Grant is illiterate, so…”
- Call to order
- Roll Call
- Ford’s Form
- Individual Member Reports
- Please give StuCo (and the community at large!) a little update about what you’ve been up to this week in your role!
- Old Business:
- Plenary Planning updates
- Quick ideas for food/snacks/drinks, decor, etc?
- Finalize budget
- Plenary Spreadsheet check-ins
- How do we better involve Affinity Groups with Students’ Council?
- Now that Jonathan’s back, we can talk more about this.
- Quaker Bouncer Updates
- Bryn Mawr SGA Budget Crisis Recap/Updates
- Our trip to RepCo last week! (feels like 100 years ago. . .)
- Community Housing Updates (from Exec Board)
- Plenary Planning updates
- New Business 1: Facilities Fund
- New Business 2: Plenary Resolution Teasers!!
- Overview of rough drafts submitted this week.
- Peer Educators Resolution
- Grant’s resolution
- CSCAR + Honor Code (watch this space!)
- Overview of rough drafts submitted this week.
- Adjournment
Call to order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 2:05pm. There are no guests today.
Fords Form
Victoria: The Fords Form is as follows:
“I noticed in last week’s EB minutes the quote “We will either make a list of concerns and address them peacefully or we might end up writing a Plenary Resolution some time in the next couple of weeks.” This is very amusing. I would like to submit for StuCo’s consideration that Quaker-inspired structured dialogue should, in fact, be considered a peaceful method of addressing concerns.”
Students’ Council note: this message was read and addressed in the Executive Board Meeting on October 3, 2025
Individual Reports
Ben Flig: We’ll be combining roll call with reports. Please go around and say your name and role and what you’ve been up to.
Grant: I’m a Co-Vice President. We have a couple of updates. The Dining Advisory Committee (DAC) met today and we’re continuing to work on updating The Coop hours. It’s now no longer in our hands, only the administration will handle this. Hopefully that change will be made soon. We’re working on other things related to dining like menu options and collecting feedback. The appointments have all been made to almost every committee. Please let us know if you have questions. We’ll conduct appointments for FAPC and the Commencement Committee soon.
Oliver: The Student Employment Committee will be appointed after fall break too.
Elena: I’m the Junior Class Representative. I’ve been going to CSCAR meetings to get a feel about how people think about the Code. I’ve been holding office hours as well.
Leo: I’m the Archivist Librarian. I’ve been working in Special Collections to bridge gaps in archives, and digesting a lot of the material that is there.
Chris: I’m the Officer of Athletics. I’ve been talking to a number of athletes about their complaints relating to The Coop hours and DC food options after 8pm. A lot we’ve already discussed.
Isaac: I’m a COML. Today we met with our Co-Presidents Ben and Sarah!
Esme: We talked about the role of the COMLs and how that will look in the future. We have meetings scheduled with Raquelle Esteves-Joyce, the Assistant Vice President for Institutional Initiatives and Compliance, tomorrow. Three of us attended the first day of Restorative Practice training last week. We’ll debrief about that with Raquelle.
Pratuysha: I’m the Freshman Class Representative. I’ve been chatting with freshmen about what they’d find helpful and any upcoming concerns. There is an interest in having an alumni day with freshmen, so I’ve been planning that. I’m mainly learning how to do things.
Ian: I’m the Webmaster Librarian. This week I’ve been working on the website so now the minutes are up from last year and this year. We have all the plenary minutes since the 2013 Special Plenary. The membership page is almost done as well. Some resources include the Constitution, the Code, the alcohol policy, accessibility resources, the posting policy, and other contact information. We have many other things! Please check it out!
Zora: I’m the Officer of Access and Disability. This week I’ve worked on contacting facilities to meet and talk about their accessibility budget.I hosted ADS open Hours at the Library Cafe on Thursday, and my Office Hours as usual on Tuesday. I’ve scheduled with the Student Event Access Committee (SEAC) and we have our meeting later today. I’ll meet with Dean McKnight to discuss accessibility fund allocation soon after fall break. I’ve got the Plenary Zoom Webinar set up. I’m scheduling with the Elections Coordinators to make our next round of elections more accessible.
Abby: I’m the Senior Class Representative. I’ve been working on preliminary planning for senior week and collecting previous work and information from the past reps.
Anjali: I’m the Junior Representative to the Board of Managers. I’ve not done a lot yet with my role. I’ve gone through the Board of Managers Moodle. I’ve also helped with scheduling some committees I’m on.
Jonathan: I’m the Officer of Multiculturalism. I met with Diamond Howell-Shields, the Director of The Office of Race and Ethnicity Education, to talk about the possibility of turning the PARC room in the DC basement into general storage space for affinity groups. That is PARC space though so we’re trying to figure out the most ideal situation. Not all affinity groups have their own storage spaces. Some of them have to store stuff in their own dorm rooms. I’ve also discussed with Diamond what her vision is for the PANA basement as well.
Julie: I’m the Officer of the Arts. I reached out to The Compendium, which is a literary magazine here that is interested in doing a collaboration with us. I’ve also reached out to the fiber arts club to also table and provide crafts at plenary. I’ve reached out to the Hurfurd Center and touched base with a student interested in a map-related project for community building in the arts at Haverford.
Coco: I’m the International Student Representative. We’re interested in how to best communicate with the broader campus community about international student experiences. We can do an event and put it into the newsletter.
Isabela: I’m on JSAAPP. This week we started office hours and began discussing alcohol policy revisions. Jack Weinstein came to us about the Honor Code getting revised at both plenaries, and he wanted to run that by us as it relates to the alcohol policy.
Hannah: I’m the Sophomore Class Representative. I held office hours, and I’ve been in contact with Dean Barr to discuss the sophomore experience.
Vivian: I’m the Officer of Student /Campus Life. I’ve done a lot of work as part of the Student Events Committee (SECS) but we just finished up interviews for new members. One of our goals is to revamp the experience for those in the committee and make it more community-based. We’re creating a manual for new members and planning a Fall Fest collaboration between Active Minds, The Arboretum, SECS, and student performers. We’re also planning a lot of other things.
Conner: I’m the Senior Elections Coordinator. We’ve been planning the next wave of elections in November. We’re working to make the current process more accessible, so we’ve chatted with Jodi and Zora. We’ll chat with IITS this week.
Victoria: I’m a Co-Secretary. Caroline and I have been improving the themes for the Weekly Consensus and Newsletter. I’ll talk more about the Facilities Fund later.
Sophia: I’m a Co-Treasurer. Ben PF and I finished regular budgeting. Appeals submissions will close today. We’ll make decisions on Tuesday. We also plan on publishing a report during fall break on the early and regular and appeals processes so that the decisions are all public knowledge. Rolling budgeting will open on Squirrel Space tomorrow. We also had office hours to help with appeals and clarify decisions.
Ben PF: Rolling budgeting is also open to any student, whether part of a club or not, to ask for money to host an event. Apply! We talked to Dean McKnight about the policy on students preparing food themselves as part of club events, which was an issue last year. No one could hold these kinds of events. It’s not good that this cannot happen because it’s a fun and cheap activity when compared to catering. Making food centers and builds community!
Sophia: There was a club, the Baking Club, that applied to exist and was circumvented by this policy…
Ben PF: The current policies determined by the DC and Risk Management is that clubs can only make food if it is vegan. The justification is food safety concerns. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. That means our new baking club is currently limited to being a vegan baking club, among all the other events that can’t be held. So we met with Dean McKnight to discuss that and the impacts it has on the students and on student orgs, and how the student body hasn’t really been a part of the decision-making process despite being the primary constituency impacted by this policy. He agreed with us on these concerns, so we’ll be working together to review this and improve it, come up with something more feasible that still satisfies concerns of food safety.We’re excited to be working on that and will have updates after fall break.
Zoe: I’m the Treasurer Librarian. I’ve been supporting the Co-Treasurers in organizing club funding. I’m starting projects related to looking through club closets and our own closets related to purchase requests that carry throughout the years. We don’t have a great inventory of these things, so we’d like to find those spaces and actually gauge what clubs need and what we can already offer. We’re looking to get a better read on what clubs are active on campus, what clubs have been active but not anymore, and see if the community wants to engage in old clubs again!
Sarah: Thank you everyone!
Plenary Planning
Ben Flig: Co-Treasurers can you give us updates about budgeting?
Ben PF: There are a few things we should chat about. We wanted to discuss the breakdown of merchandise, food, and other items. We have a $7,000 budget overall. We’re considering doing something different than boba and having more substantial food/snack options, and the current proposed allocation for merch is roughly $3,800 (345 shirts and 800 stickers). Do people have suggestions, ideas, or feedback?
Julie: This is a lot of shirts compared to previous years. Two years ago we would get food which was not well received. People just wanted more merch, so we did that last year. We want to make sure it’s somewhat exclusive to incentivize people coming to Plenary.
Victoria: I think the increase in shirts this year is fine. I’d also like to mention we improved sizing last year so keeping that would be nice.
Julie: We did a larger size range and we actually had left overs because no one wanted XS. We absorbed that into increasing S-L, but keeping the XL-XXXL. Those are the last to go, but having accessibility is very important. I think the sizes have been refined over my two years here.
Ian: Can you explain the drink syrups?
Julie: I was wondering why we’re not getting boba this year.
Ben PF: We actually haven’t decided that. We wanted to discuss it here. It’s an on-going draft and an incomplete picture so far, we want us all to discuss options and ideas.
Ben Flig: Can you guys discuss what’s already on the list?
Ben PF: The drink syrups are something Sarah chatted about with us. IKEA sells concentrated syrups (lingonberry, blueberry, and elderflower) and you mix it into water or sparkling water and it’s a fun drink you can have. It’s on theme too. That amount gets us enough for about 800, 8-ounce servings.
Sophia: To Julie’s point, this is much more cost effective and transportation won’t be an issue.
Ben PF: It’s difficult to transport boba especially since we had issues last year with the van. We think the shirts and stickers will be enough to get people there on time, and we want the amenities to be accessible to everyone, not just the first to come. We’re floating pizza since it’s logistically easier than a food truck, cost-effective in large quantities and it’s what they used to provide at plenary for a long time before 2020.
Julie: I have concerns. We have relations with a family owned business. We usually have enough boba. I know a worry is that some people don’t like boba, but not everyone will like this. I think this is a plenary tradition and maintaining that is important especially since this is a local, family owned business. That’s important to keep in mind. The theme is fun, but I don’t agree.
Elena: Building off of that I don’t like boba but it is a big part of plenary. We were discussing the lack of traditions last week. This is a tradition, it’s been on the plenary shirts. I feel like it’s a crucial part.
Grant: I’d be hesitant to replace the boba for these reasons. We have the money for it and if we replace it with something else in addition to the syrups, I don’t see that as a good enough reason.
Sarah: Will people be able to eat? Will there be a budget for food? People get hungry.
Ben PF: Boba was $3,150 last year, so after boba and merch we have about 50 dollars left over for snacks. The point of bringing this up is to discuss it, we’re not trying to propose a definitive budget.
Coco: I have two questions. Have we been talking to athletics about how comfortable they are with us bringing food? I know that is a previous concern from past years. Also last year we managed to have the merch, boba, and we had a snack table. Did the budget change?
Ben PF: The traditional allocation is $7,000 and it was upped to $7,500 last year.
Sophia: I hear your point Julie, and I agree. I will say Haverford in general orders a lot from Yi’s Boba, so I don’t think the business will be negatively impacted if we don’t order from there. It’s a measured impact. I believe we’ve only had boba at plenary for two years and previously we had food trucks which I believe are more popular than boba. I personally have a concern on how much people care about boba at plenary. There’s a balance of course to incentivize people attending, but I’ve heard an argument that people wouldn’t come to plenary if there wasn’t boba. I struggle with that argument because that’s not what plenary is about. It’s about engaging with the Code and the community. If taking away boba is a big deal, then what situation is our community in? To Coco’s point about pizza and food, we’ll be in conversation with athletics, which is why it’s up in the air.
Sarah: I hear your concerns. Our next step is to find out if having food in the GIAC is allowed. People bring their own food anyways. I bring in a lot of snacks because I’m starving personally. We can see what athletics says about that. Moving on to the delegation of tasks, Julie do you have updates about art and merch?
Julie: Yes, I’ve heard back from the fiber arts club and they want to do a small craft at a table. They have some supplies, but if there are a lot of people they may ask for funding. I told them to provide a budget to see if we can provide any money. For the zine, I’ll meet with those students this week.
Sarah: Any physical logistics updates?
Vivian & Jonathan: No.
Ben Flig: How’s the advertisement going?
Ian: I’m waiting a little bit longer to start.
Sarah: Let’s start that at the end of this week, since the workshops will be complete by then. Ben and I made a form that the Co-Secretaries will be putting into the Weekly Consensus for students to sign up for tabling. It’ll be first come first serve. Any Zoom updates?
Zora: I got it set up with Charles. We’ll chat more about how it will work. We’re in a good place.
Sarah: Great thanks everyone!
Ben Flig: Last week we talked about how to get affinity groups more involved with StuCo. Jonathan I’m curious what you think about this. How can we get the Affinity Group Coalition (AGC) and StuCo more integrated?
Jonathan: I think it should be based on the affinity groups opinion on how involved they want to be. We’re working on getting our monthly meetings together which has been a tricky issue due to fall break and midterms. We can get input from those groups themselves before we say anything definitively.
Sarah: Let us know how it goes, thank you! We’ll now discuss the Quaker Bouncer updates. We had Darren and Isabela visit us at Friday’s Exec Board. We talked about what their goals are and how they want to improve their training and services. We’ll have them chat with JSAAPP and Peer Educators to discuss party host training. The Quaker Bouncers want more resources to benefit student safety and want more clarity on how their roles can be enacted on campus in relation to student life and Campus Safety. We’ll keep having conversations. There was also talk about roaming shifts and other changes like budget transparency to make their roles better.
Ben Flig: Regarding the budgeting crisis at Bryn Mawr, the Bryn Mawr SGA has fully funded all of the clubs they needed to fund this semester. In the future they will likely change the way they do budgeting so this sort of crisis will not happen again.
Facilities Fund
Victoria: We got about 17 submissions. There is one idea that people seem to really be into. We are going to choose roughly the top five ideas that we think will best serve the student body based on the input we received. At the end of the day this decision is made by Don Campbell, Director of Facilities Management, because he understands the logistics behind all of these projects based on risk and other factors. The submissions are in Slack. I’d like to point out some specific suggestions for the minutes.
The reason why we can’t do an HCA blue bus stop, or at least use the blue bus stop that is down there beyond on Saturdays, is it really throws off the timing of the blue bus schedule. This was a suggestion that has been made in previous years and keeps getting shut down. We run two buses typically during the day and it is already hard to stay on top of the schedule; going south of the campus is a big time constraint. Sorry guys, you’ll just have to leave your apartment earlier!
For those of you that don’t know there is a whole description in the doc, but there is an area in the Union basement that is really dangerous to be in and has not been renovated in a long time. The Jazz Club used to do stuff there. It was a great music space but hasn’t been renovated in forever. I think renovating the Crypt would be a great idea.
Furthermore, the mural is an idea I also liked. Some students wanted a mural specifically about global health.
Zoe: A mural seems rad and renovating the Crypt would be nice.
Julie: I second this!
Zora: I third!
Chris: The DC Common Space would be great. A lot of universities have big student centers that students actively use.
Ben PF: I wanted to say if there are small-ish things that people want to get, let us know. We coordinated with Student Life to get a foosball table and ping pong table in the DC basement. It could be things like that or even Adirondack chairs, benches, other shared equipment that’s not necessarily a huge project can easily come out of our surplus funds. We can coordinate with facilities outside of the Facilities fund.
Ben Flig: For curious people, the Crypt’s problem is three fold. First, it is not accessible and currently that’s not fine becauseHaverford doesn’t have a legal obligation to do anything about it under the ADA until we renovate it. However, if we did renovations we’d have to make it accessible, which is very difficult. The second thing is that the reason it is such a delightful space is also precisely the reason that it is a hard space to renovate. It is in the basement of Union, and it is made up of load-bearing arches. The last problem is that originally it was attached to the music library, so it was a series of rooms that were connected. If we renovated the crypt we might want to take the opportunity to renovate more broadly the Union as a student space, which is costly.
Chris: Do we have an opinion on improving some of the apartments?
Victoria: They’re already getting renovated.
Ian: Also, the apartments are really odd in that the cost to renovate it is 30% of the value of the apartment itself, and the College doesn’t see that it’s necessary to put more into the apartments versus knocking them down in the future. Union is a cool building so it’d be nice to put more in there.
Sarah: I think the straps and bars are a super easy fix.
Victoria: Yes, I also wanted to mention that. Last year students asked us to add some handlebars in the electric blue bus, so we asked Campus Safety to and now the bars are there. I do think straps would be helpful, and something that can be done outside of the fund, since I’m pretty short!
Oliver: Regarding Union, if we were to remove those spaces as classrooms it would have a negative impact on scheduling because we’re at capacity for rooms we can have classes in.
Ben Flig: We can take discussion about Union out of the meeting.
Ben PF: We can also tell Don that we have the surplus, so that is extra money to tap into.
Victoria: Yes, it sounds good.
Ben PF: On that topic, one thing we were thinking about for the surplus is a dance practice studio for dance and martial arts. It’ll be similar to the Swan Multipurpose Room which is overbooked right now. We could build it in some building, like a dorm, and put in wood flooring, mirrors, and lights. It probably won’t be a ton of money, and it’ll be a huge improvement!
Victoria: Thank you everyone! Sounds like there is a lot of interest in a mural and renovating the Union Crypt. Please let me know over the next few days any other stand-outs so I can forward it to Don.
Plenary Resolutions
Sarah: We have a list of different resolutions students may be bringing.
This conversation was taken off the minutes for the writers’ privacy!
Sarah: Thank you everyone for coming, I adjourn this meeting at 3:05pm.
Some more fun from your Students’ Council
“Trust, Concern, J’Accuse!” -Ben Fligelman
“Confront! Confront! Confront!” -Sophia
