Haverford Students’ Council Meeting Minutes 11/17-11/23

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 11/14

Friday, November 14, 2025; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102

Members Present: Ben Fligelman, Sarah Weill-Jones, Oliver Wilson, Grant DeVries, Ben Perez-Flesler, Sophia Goss, Victoria Haber, Caroline Yao

Members Absent:

Guests: Jonathan Lee

Next Meeting: Friday, November 21; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102

“Hashtag…awesome.” – Sarah Weill-Jones

Call to order
Roll Call
Adoption of Agenda
Fords Form
Old Business:
1. Plenary Recap
2. Where do we go from here re: the new Honor Code
3. Ratification status
New Business 1: Officer of Multiculturalism Jonathan Lee is invited to discuss AGC and the catering policy
New Business 2: The StuCo Surplus
1. Endowed Fund for Students’ Council?
New Business 3: Librarians Updates
Adjournment

Call to Order

Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 4:09pm.

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.

Community Comment

Victoria: Guests please say your names for the minutes.

Jonathan: Hi my name is Jonathan, my pronouns are he/him. I’m the Officer of Multiculturalism. I came here to talk about the affinity group coalition and the catering policy.

Fords Form

Victoria: We have one Fords Form today. This student would like a response. The Fords Form is as follows:

“I am a first-year attending my first Plenary and was immensely baffled and disappointed by one particular statement I heard. I am unsure who the speaker was, but I believe they were part of Honor Council. They stated something along the lines of “we needn’t have the council’s values in writing because I trust them to uphold our values.” I was shocked to see the exact rhetoric of what allowed our many historical controversial cases to exit in the first place The ideal of trusting that those in power will keep to their word with no real accountability is one that originates from not being affiliated with a particular group that has a history as well as a potential for discrimination in relation to those in power not given strict enough regulation. This comment is not in relation to a particular part of the Honor Code, but rather, a dangerous sentiment that was expressed by those with power. Limiting the Honor Code to ten pages has made it more of a recommendation rather than a real document that affects our daily lives. Someone authoring multiple sections of the Honor Code noted indirectly that a large majority of people were not going to read it in full anyways and because of that the outlining of specifics within the document didn’t matter, relating back to this sense of trust that is expected even when accountability for the councils in power is not set in stone. I use the word “accountability” in reference to the Honor Code becoming a vague suggestion that doesn’t outline as specifically what rhetoric is expected from student governance. Another speaker and author of multiple resolutions noted how there are more specifics in other documents, but the ideation and rhetoric of student governance must be outlined in the Honor Code for it to have any power. The extreme condensing of the Honor Code, in my opinion, is not something to be celebrated. While it may be more accessible for students to skim through this list of ideas, it eliminates what the code is far more needed for— a retroactive manner of accountability for specifically Honor Council and Student’s Council. The Honor Code highlights expectations of trust for all students but I do not feel secure being governed by my peers with the most important document influencing all of our behaviors becoming a vague, ten page document. I am extremely open to being told that my interpretation is possibly misguided, but I hope dearly that this perspective is taken into account.”

Ben PF: I would start by saying, I think part of the issue here may be a misunderstanding of the purpose and scope of the Honor Code itself in relation to other documents we have, like the Honor Council Charter and the Students’ Association Constitution. The Constitution dictates the exact rules and responsibilities that student government (including Honor Council, Students’ Council, JSAAPP, etc.) and its members are bound to within their duties. That includes a number of specific accountability measures like impeachment and recall. This is on top of the fact that yes, as students we are all obligated to the Honor Code in all our actions and any student can confront people in student government positions for their actions if they believe them to be out of line with the Honor Code, and if that confrontation is not sufficient, they can be brought to Honor Council. The Honor Council Charter has even more particular responsibilities and accountability procedures for Honor Council members, which as upperclassmen will know, many of those were added and updated at the most recent Spring Plenary (as part of a resolution brought by Honor Council itself). Accountability specifically for student government is not within the scope of the Honor Code because that’s covered by other more specific documents, while the Honor Code is supposed to apply to all students generally and broadly in our daily lives. This is not something that the rewrite changed. I’d be curious and open to hearing any specific language or ideas you feel need to be conveyed better because it’s not totally clear to me what feels like it’s missing currently that could address these concerns. I also really disagree that the new document is vague, especially if people believe it’s more vague than the previous one. I think some of that is taking ideas that were very particular and making them more universal, but more universal does not mean more vague, and more particular is not inherently more useful. We have tried to make each sentence and each idea being expressed as clear as possible so that there is a stronger foundation for people to apply them from. That means avoiding ideas that could be (and were) interpreted differently by different people, which the old Honor Code was absolutely full of, and in fact that ambiguity was a significant piece of the potential legal issues we sought to resolve by avoiding vague implications. I would be happy to explain those and point them out in detail to anyone who is interested in the choices we made, email me.

Ultimately the power of these documents doesn’t come from some kind of external force restricting what we can do, but rather by our own willingness and courage as students to apply their meaning to ourselves and others in our daily interactions. It’s a different kind of “enforcement” in that sense because ultimately the responsibility is on us, and on you reading this, and that’s what makes that responsibility meaningful. So I think that’s what is meant when people say that the text alone cannot hold people accountable or will not determine what they do — it’s how we apply the text ourselves, taking action, that is the actual power. For example, the existence of the Fords Form represents Students’ Council opening itself up to accountability just as the Honor Code asks of us, and you writing in is an example of you using that ability to express a concern and have it be addressed by your peers. I’m sorry that you don’t feel like you can trust your student government, please talk to us about it more if you continue to feel that way. I have felt that exact way in the past myself and it is very valuable to strengthen those relationships and build trust in good faith, as the Honor Code expresses, which is exactly what you’re doing. I will say, I don’t think having a longer document necessarily makes it more powerful, if anything, length makes it feel much less important as it gets diluted and harder to apply because it’s so unwieldy. But I will add that the Constitution is nearly 40 pages of rules specifically for StuCo on top of the Honor Code, if that helps satisfy anything. And I feel very strongly that the new Honor Code actually covers significantly more content than the old one, and 90% of the decrease in length is just moving the regulations and responsibilities of Honor Council into a new governing document (the Charter) instead of the Code itself, though they are still just as binding. The new Code is not shorter due to any narrower scope but rather because it is better organized and focused, more to the point, and less repetitive, and as part of that there are actually a lot of things that are more detailed or better explained now than previously.

To specifically address the comment you first mentioned, my recollection is this may have been more about the honor council being responsible for adjudicating when community values are not upheld by the student body, but I can’t find where this was in the plenary minutes and everything kind of blurs together so I’m not super confident. I understand how the statement as it was understood is very harmful and not considerate of times when Honor Council has not upheld the community’s trust. Again, I’m not exactly sure what was actually said though I am confident that was not the intent of my peers. We have very heavily considered those cases and how to ensure the Code gives students the proper tools to advocate for the right outcomes, but that’s hard given how situational everything is and you can’t assume everyone will have the same interpretation, and overlegislation often hurts more than it helps. I’ll finish saying that I personally really appreciate this feedback, I also care a lot about accountability for these structures, that’s part of why I ran for this position, this is my first semester in student government. Though I’ve also learned it is often significantly more complicated and difficult than people tend to expect from the outside, which is why we always want to bring more people in so that criticism is better informed. So I’m really glad people are considering these things thoughtfully and critically, and we would love to have you join CSCAR and have your voice in working on implementing these ideas and potentially making improvements next semester. That goes for anyone reading this, please email me ([email protected] or Sofie [email protected]), we love to talk. I know this is a really long response and there’s a lot more I could talk about but want to make sure this gets the attention it deserves.

Old Business

Sarah: Plenary happened! It went smoothly. I’m glad we passed six resolutions and opened two ratifications in three hours. I’m really excited that our students engaged in discourse. We had a record turnout of 1,000 students attending Plenary at one part, we didn’t lose quorum once, and we got quorum within seven minutes of 2:00pm. I think that’s impressive so I want to thank everyone’s efforts, especially the students. I’m very happy with how Plenary went.

Ben Flig: I just want to say how appreciative I am of all of you who made Plenary happen. I appreciate all the work you did.

Sarah: So where do we go now with the new Code? As you know the ratification of the Honor Code and Alcohol Policy closed and passed today. We did hit quorum, which was good. It was passed with minimal objections. What are other ways we plan on engaging with the new Code?

Ben PF: Sofie and I will announce a discussion session with the student body. CSCAR will continue meeting. Those dates are to come. They’re always open to everyone and we’ll have a new ongoing feedback form. We also plan on reviewing all the ratification comments and addressing any misunderstandings, also using those to start planning what improvements might be possible next semester.

Victoria: I heard from Sofie that there might be more people brought onto CSCAR.

Ben PF: We were thinking about that. Contact us if you’re interested!

Ben Flig: The thing I wanna say about the Honor Code, is right after Plenary, there was definitely a lot of commentary on social media. I appreciate those who posted on Instagram rather than Fizz. Those who contributed on Fizz tended not to contribute as productively. We were able to have dialogue with those who posted on Instagram rather than anonymously on Fizz. We also appreciate the Fords Form we received. I wish more people would submit Fords Forms if they had thoughts they directly wanted to share to Students’ Council.

Sarah: I thought what the individual on the Fords Form this week wrote was thorough and fair and this student should apply to CSCAR if they are interested in continuing to share their thoughts.

Sounds like we have a clear path forward. The Honor Code will be ratified again next semester due to the new constitutional amendment, as long as it is passed in the President’s Office. There’ll be ample opportunity for students to improve the Code then. The Code is a living document, so if there’s something you want changed, you can do that! Please work with us.

Ben Flig: Another note about Wendy’s ratification comments, we sent an email to her following Plenary with the resolutions and student body decisions, and she has 30 days to reply. We’ll await her reply.

Ben PF: I saw some comments in the ratification I wanted to specifically address to clear up confusion. Any edits we make to the Code have to be approved in the President’s Office. This is a process that has existed ever since the Code has.

Ben Flig: The Honor Code is compact between students, faculty, and administration.

Sarah: Does anyone have any more questions? If not, we’ll move on.

New Business

Sarah: Jonathan, could you let us know how your meetings have been going?

Jonathan: After the two AGC meetings that have been held, there’s a common feeling of the catering policy being a burden to the affinity groups that have attended so far. I’d like to try and figure out how we can amend that. It is disproportionately affecting affinity groups on this campus.

I also wanted to discuss the $15 per person policy. After talking to someone on the board of BSL, there was a cookout event that they wanted to hold that exceeded this policy. I think trying to balance equity versus equality is something that should be considered. I’d like to dive deeper into that.

Sarah: Can you expand more?

Jonathan: I think that one of the things is a lack of knowing the guidelines, because, from my perspective at least, the catering policy doesn’t exactly exist in one centralized document that affinity groups can easily access. I know that you can find the catering policy online, but it is difficult to work around due to the fact you have to plan four weeks in advance if your event will cater to over thirty people. There’s a general lack of awareness of what that catering policy is and wondering if there was a more effective way to get that information across. I believe that KCC had an event canceled because they didn’t realize that they had to think about this policy in a significantly timely manner. More recently, the dumpling making event that the PARC has been wanting to do have been scrapped because of the policy around students cooking raw foods. Even though we tried to do completely vegan dumplings, they wouldn’t allow it either. We were rejected, so now we want to repurpose.

Sophia: Who did you get that rejection from?

Caroline: It was through email correspondence from the staff in Catering. Just to make sure we aren’t missing things that were also discussed in AGC meetings, I’ll help add something. Some groups also talked about facing challenges in finding locations that they could cater from for certain specialized events, without it heightening their costs and being denied. I think that BSL had brought up that challenge for that cookout event, but again, not sure about specific details. I also know some Asian affinity groups like to cater from restaurants in Philly. While they want to factor in providing fair and equitable prices for restaurants, it’s sometimes hard to access due to budgeting limitations. I know Co-Treasurers, you both work really hard on that and want to dialogue with people.

Sophia: These are conversations we’d love to have with leaders. In terms of the cookout event you’re referencing,BSL was trying to cater across state lines, and that contributed to more of the extravagant cost. I understand the struggle of trying to find specific cuisines locally, but I think that’s a situation where I’d be surprised if there truly aren’t other, cheaper options. These are conversations that’d we’d love to have with student leaders directly.

Ben PF: We can’t know that there are problems and how to solve them if we’re not in the loop. The catering situation is complicated because the rules contain five different aspects. That includes some of our own policies on what we will and won’t fund, Risk Management, DC Catering, and also Student Engagement. There are different aspects over what we personally do or do not have flexibility on, depending on who controls that area of policy.

Sophia: The four week policy is because it is hard for Student Engagement to get it done under a shorter timeline. It makes their jobs very difficult, but I also see the burden put on students. It’s not logistically feasible with the contracting and COIs to do it in a shorter period of time. That’s a situation that they were more flexible about in the past, and have gotten burned about it. That’s something that’s developed as a safety mechanism for Student Engagement and student groups. Zoe and I were just talking about this and we wanted to create a better, more centralized way to get information out.

Zoe: We just chatted with Student Engagement about how there’s a need for a centralized location for our different policies. We have those resources available through our website and Student Engagement’s website, but it can be difficult to find so I’m working on collating those resources. It will take a little bit of time, but we hear that, we agree, and we’re working on it!

Jonathan: I’ll let AGC know that’s in the works. I think that’d benefit them.

Ben PF: I’ll also say, in general (not just regarding food), in the last few weeks, we’ve been getting a lot of questions around ‘Where did this policy come from?’ or ‘I’ve never heard of this.’ The answer is always that it was in the Meeting of the Clubs presentation.

We explain everything there and send the slides, but unfortunately a lot of people don’t pay as thorough attention as they could so there are a lot of questions as the semester progresses. We’re working out ways to make the material more engaging, and having those resources with that document there, not just a slideshow. In terms of where those policies are discussed, it’s at the Meeting of the Clubs. The timeline and catering stuff, except for raw food and fifteen dollars, has been the same for the past three semesters, so it should not be any surprise to clubs.

Ben Flig: Do our Co-Treasurers have updates on the raw food policy?

Sophia: We’ve been in conversations with Dean McKnight, but there hasn’t been a ton of movement.

Ben PF: One of the ideas we’ve been talking about is trying to get ServeSafe staff to be there at those food events. We’ve also been talking about getting students and club leaders themselves to be ServeSafe trained using our budget to host trainings. The college would then hopefully be satisfied with its liability protection. That might theoretically help and enable students to host events. We’ve been frustrated about this though. Given last year’s issues, we met with the people involved with this policy to make work arounds before the semester started, which they were responsive to, but three weeks after that they suddenly changed their minds to deny those work arounds without telling us. They make a new policy, and it’s often contradictory and badly communicated. It also isn’t written down as a formal policy anywhere which is frustrating. It also makes sense on our end to want these events to be possible because if students make food themselves it’s cheaper and it’s a student bonding activity.

Sophia: We’d love for people to make food!

Caroline: Is there a cost associated with having a ServeSafe member be present?

Sophia: They’d have to be paid.

Caroline: Ok. That was suggested to PARC, so I was wondering.

Ben PF: If you’d like to, you can in rolling budget.

Sophia: Can we be CC’d also on these emails?

Caroline: Yeah.

Ben PF: Back to the $15 per person, that was something we started at the start of the semester for two reasons. One being to kind of level the playing field in that groups are theoretically getting the same for the same cost. Also that groups have expectations around what funding is possible.

Sophia: There are certain organizations that have a higher standard cost for events, and we’d like that to be equivalent to other organizations that have been working with much less money. It’s to balance out access to the funds across all groups.

Ben PF: There were groups last year that would request tight budgets and be conscientious, and they don’t have the information to know that they could be getting more. So, this is just setting expectations, allowing groups to know what they are able to request upfront.

Sophia: For several groups that $15 per person is higher than what they were budgeting.

Ben PF: At the highest level, we’re trying to save our budget. Catering takes up a huge portion of that. It can get out of control quickly. On the other hand, this semester we’ve been fortunate that we have a lot of budget left over.

Sophia: That’s unique, I don’t think we’re anticipating that to happen often.

Ben PF: We were more concerned at the start of the semester, but now we have more money, so we can maybe expect to do a little more next year. We’ve been considering if it’s a limit that can fluctuate from semester to semester based on what we can afford. We’ll see what happens.

Oliver: There is already a big imbalance between fall and spring. Last year we spent twice as much in the spring than in the fall, which is due to Haverfest, senior week and end of academic year events.

Sophia: Did you guys go over budget?

Oliver: Jodi talked to us about it, apparently we did exceed the budget by about $40,000. The information we have last year was shaky we didn’t have clear or correct information about the amount in the StuCo account or how much was being spent

Ben PF: Most importantly if groups are running into limitations that are significant, we want them to talk to us. Even if it’s not something we directly have control over, we can try to push for changes with the connections we have since that’s part of our role. If people don’t tell us what they’re running into then we don’t know about it and can’t do anything. With the $15 per person specifically, because it’s our own internal policy, we can do a lot of internal work arounds to support all students.

Sophia: We can do that this semester because we have much more leftover than we anticipated. I’d love to talk more about that $15 per person with group leaders, and see what has been tricky about that.

Ben PF: I think we can come up with a more nuanced policy for sure if clubs can give us feedback on what they think that should look like. Groups that run into limitations can also ask for funds from IDEA, which I’m not sure has been accessed frequently this semester. I don’t know if groups necessarily know to submit those requests.

Caroline: I think the IDEA’s budget has been more limited due to internal changes or the federal administration and pressures. We used to push a lot of orders to them, but I don’t think we can do that as much this year. Just something to be conscientious about.

Sophia: I’d like to have better communication on that.

Oliver: I think they’ve been hesitant to say numbers explicitly. We probably told people to push about $5,000 worth of request to them and there wasn’t an issue.

Ben PF: We want people to let us know about the problems they run into.

Jonathan: Thank you!

Ben Flig: Thank you to our Co-Treasurers.

New Business: Surplus

Sarah: We’ll talk about the Students’ Council Surplus now. We were talking about an endowed fund, would the two of you like to elaborate?

Sophia: This is something that we’ve chatted about privately and broadly. We were thinking about using the surplus to create a reliable and consistent form of discretionary income for Students’ Council. We could do this by investing at least $100,000 or more into the endowment and creating a restricted fund. Based on the amount of money we have in the surplus that would probably yield us $10-15,000 a year if we put all of it in, but that also depends on how it grows.

Grant: I think that’s a great idea versus picking a large project and spending all of the money.

Sophia: This is something we wanted to do originally but didn’t exactly know it was possible or how to do that.

Oliver: I thought there were legal issues using operational money to invest with.

Sophia: I thought that too initially, but none of those concerns have been brought up in the conversations I’ve had

Ben Flig: That’s not quite true because if the college has a surplus, they will roll that surplus into the endowment.

Oliver: I guess I mean, there is some process for declaring that and we’ll need to make sure that that’s done.

Ben PF: The idea is that we’d set aside ⅔ or ¾ of what we’ve had left over from previous years for an endowed fund and the rest we could use discretionarily this year for various capital projects. It doesn’t make sense to spend all of that right now. To be clear, the income from the fund would be restricted towards some purpose that benefits the student body, and not for Students’ Council itself; we haven’t figured out yet what that would be exactly and want to get more student input.

Oliver: What endowment draw percentage were we thinking of if we wanted it to grow? Are we gonna grow it from drawing less than what it’s growing by or from what we have at the end of the year?

Sophia: We consistently had surplus, so the way that I was conceiving of it, is that it would be grown solely through the surplus being added to it.

Oliver: We’d take whatever it gets each year? What if it has a down year, do we feed it back to maintain it?

Ben PF: We’d have to create an investment policy in the Constitution.

Oliver: What is admin’s thoughts on letting us be the ones to decide fiscally how it’s getting treated?

Ben Flig: Something to keep in mind is that we wouldn’t manage how it works. Money is lumped as a whole into the endowment handled separately. We don’t have that much control over what we are investing it in.

Sophia: We can put it into the ESG fund they’re developing as an alternative.

Oliver: I guess ideally, we would have something in writing, and that the treasurers would have more control over those things, more than we currently have over fees. This is something that is current students’ money that we are putting in that we don’t want to lose.

Sophia: I think that can be specified in the restrictions.

Ben PF: That’s our next step, meeting with IA, what do all of these things look like, what could be possible allowed uses, so on.

Sophia: I’d like to loop you into those conversations, Oliver.

Oliver: Sure, thanks.

New Business: Librarians Update

Ian: The librarians have done some chatting, and we should be updating the Constitution pretty soon. We’ve taken a look at it, and we’ll be meeting Sunday at 3pm to go through the Plenary updates and put them in, and send them for approval. Also, we’re supposed to look for any inconsistencies and we’ll suggest things that can be approved. The DC Bulletin Board, that I was told was not our job, but … it now will be!

Grant: I’m not sure if you had the word document of an editable version of the Constitution. Do you need that?

Ian: I opened it in a pdf editor and put it into a Google Doc.

Grant: Okay, if you want I can email you the Word document.

Victoria: You can also upload the editable version to the Google Drive. Just send it to us.

Sarah: Great. I adjourn this meeting at 4:54pm.

General Body Meeting 11/16

Sunday, November 16, 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, Caroline Yao, Coco Liu, Elena Vol, Vivian Ross, Conner McWhan, Hettie Van Dyke, Ben Fitzgerald, Anjali Agarwal, Jonathan Lee, Zora Kuehne, Julie Edelstein, Esme Dorsey, Ian Trask, Zoe Hartmann, Pratyusha Katiyar, Hannah Mattison, Chris O’Conner, Leo Ni, Michael Pyo, Sofie Quirk, Abigail Trapp

Members Absent: Jack Weinstein, Jackson Cannon, Isabela Azumatan Aceituno, Isaac Kemokai

Guests: N/A

Next Meeting: Sunday, November 23; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101

“Joy cometh at 2:00pm!” – Victoria Haber “Joy cometh at 2:02pm!” – Ben Fligelman

Call to order
Roll Call
Ford’s Form
Old Business:
1. Plenary Recap
2. Where do we go from here re: the new Honor Code
3. How do we uphold community standards, anti-racism, and protecting marginalized groups?
  1. Should Students’ Council be a more partisan body?
New Business 1: Scheduling the Last Retreat
New Business 2: Panels for Gender Minorities and FGLI Students
Adjournment

Call to Order

Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 2:02pm.

Fords Form

Victoria: There are two Fords Forms. They are as follows:

“I am a first-year attending my first plenary and was immensely baffled and disappointed by one particular statement I heard. I am unsure who the speaker was, but I believe they were part of Honor Council. They stated something along the lines of “we needn’t have the council’s values in writing because I trust them to uphold our values.” I was shocked to see the exact rhetoric of what allowed our many historical controversial cases to exit in the first place The ideal of trusting that those in power will keep to their word with no real accountability is one that originates from not being affiliated with a particular group that has a history as well as a potential for discrimination in relation to those in power not given strict enough regulation. This comment is not in relation to a particular part of the Honor Code, but rather, a dangerous sentiment that was expressed by those with power. Limiting the Honor Code to ten pages has made it more of a recommendation rather than a real document that affects our daily lives. Someone authoring multiple sections of the Honor Code noted indirectly that a large majority of people were not going to read it in full anyways and because of that the outlining of specifics within the document didn’t matter, relating back to this sense of trust that is expected even when accountability for the councils in power is not set in stone. I use the word “accountability” in reference to the Honor Code becoming a vague suggestion that doesn’t outline as specifically what rhetoric is expected from student governance. Another speaker and author of multiple resolutions noted how there are more specifics in other documents, but the ideation and rhetoric of student governance must be outlined in the Honor Code for it to have any power. The extreme condensing of the Honor Code, in my opinion, is not something to be celebrated. While it may be more accessible for students to skim through this list of ideas, it eliminates what the Code is far more needed for— a retroactive manner of accountability for specifically Honor Council and Student’s Council. The Honor Code highlights expectations of trust for all students but I do not feel secure being governed by my peers with the most important document influencing all of our behaviors becoming a vague, ten page document. I am extremely open to being told that my interpretation is possibly misguided, but I hope dearly that this perspective is taken into account.”

Victoria: Since we reviewed this in executive board, we will not thoroughly discuss this one. The second is as follows:

“this is for the student dining advisory committee but don’t know how to send it directly to them: is it possible to get just a bit more variety of tea flavors in the DC? chai especially would be lovely. it can be the same basic bigelow brand, doesn’t have to be fancy or crazy expensive”

Victoria: The student did not indicate if they wanted a response.

Grant: Thank you for the feedback. I will add it to the list of things to discuss in DAC.

Sarah: Thank you for your feedback, I hope there will be chai for you sometime soon.

Ben Flig: I appreciate your support of Connecticut’s tea brand, Bigelow!

Old Business

Sarah: We did Plenary!

*Applause*

Sarah: We all worked together beautifully. We finished in three hours. There were two opening ratifications. Quorum at 2:07pm.

Zora: Thank you to the Haverford community for showing up!

Sarah: While we couldn’t have done it without Council and SECS volunteers, we couldn’t have done it without Haverford students coming to hit quorum at 2:05pm. We wanted to make sure you all know how grateful we are for you. Ben and I want to thank you all, it was beautiful!

Ben Flig: Speaking of the Honor Code, Plenary in many ways is just the beginning. At plenary we ratified the new Honor Code, but to quote an old Talmudic proverb: “Words written on the skin of dead animals are no match for words inscribed on the living flesh of the human heart.” What I mean by this is that it’s great that we have a new Honor Code — words on paper! But those words don’t mean anything unless we act on them.

*Side Note: the idea of “words written on the skin of dead animals” refers to a time before modern paper came into common use and animal hide, or vellum, was the primary medium for the written word. No animals were harmed in the writing of the Haverford Honor Code!*

I want to discuss some of the feedback I’ve seen on Fizz and Instagram, where they talked about how they feel that the Code was deboned, in a sense. I’m curious what we think of that critique and also how we can build buy-in around the Code that still protects marginalized communities as the old Code did.

Victoria: I am an example of a marginalized student, I’m not the sole representative of all of marginalized students of course. The way I personally feel is that the Code is doing what it needs to do in the border context of society. In my past role as Co-President, I was deep in the weeds of witnessing and dissecting the federal landscape was impacting students last semester and over the summer. As a regular person, I was directly witnessing how institutions and individuals were targeted. This was, and still is, incredibly stressful, daunting, and nonstop. I will say, I felt a lot of fear with how the Code at the time could put more eyes on us as an institution and as students. I want to honor student advocacy for retaining that explicit language, but that advocacy is a privilege. If we retain our old Code, we have to think about who is at risk. Do we really need to put undocumented, international, and/or students of color at risk because students feel like they have to be told in writing to not be racist or homophobic? I am not sure if the students who feel most strongly about retaining that language have much to lose compared to some others. I encourage students who feel this way to think of new ways we can retain the institutional memory that resulted in the language written in old Code. Because while I agree with its language, I don’t agree with the potential harm it could cause right now.

I like how, in the new Code there is more timeless language. A lot of the values that were written were advocated for in the summer and by CSCAR were written in an eloquent and concise way and allows us to interpret it in whatever context or time we might be in in the future. Down the line, if students have issues with that, they are more than welcome to form their own groups and bring resolutions to plenary. But I think the work that has been done since the beginning of 2025 is enough. We don’t have to continue revisiting it. I think we’ve done enough with the Code for now.

Sophia: I would invite students who feel that way to interact with the document in good faith. I also encourage them to interact with the old Code and see how it was confusing or contradictory. To me this perspective often comes from being distanced from the Code and not interacting with it deeply, and I’d love to have those conversations with people more in-depth.

Anjali: I’m a big fan of the new Code and I appreciate the work that went into it. I understand where some students come from when we talk about institutional memory and a feeling of grief over the loss of the language that came from a large and broad student movement that pushed for change. I want to hold that remembrance. I am understanding of our broader political context too and how we protect ourselves is representative in the new Code and so I agree with Victoria about the language.

Michael: I just wanted to say that a lot of people’s concerns regarding the Honor Council itself would apply here. I haven’t talked to Sofie about this yet but maybe Honor Council can release a statement. We’re committed to being anti-racsit, and just because the Code doesn’t explicitly have that language, the Honor Council is still committed to those written values in the previous Code.

Sofie: In kind of making the language more broadly applicable, yes racism is contrary to our community values, I think that’s still pretty clear in the new Code. Conduct devoid of trust, concern and respect is still against the Code. This new Code has not made anything permissible that was not before. We can clarify that for students at a later date.

Ben PF: There’s a lot of talk about how we’ve tried to make the new Code more values based. What that means is that we’ve tried to better articulate how our values are a foundation for what we do. In relation to the old Code, a lot of what it explained assumed that students were already on board with those values, like being actively anti-racist, assuming students know what that means before building a foundation on why we do these things. What we’ve tried to do in the new Code is to lay that foundation, and make it make sense to everyone, regardless of political affiliation, so that these ideas can be applied more universally and with a stronger backing. What we want is for people to take those ideas, and act from/based on those values, and understand the harm that is caused when we act not in accordance with the values.

Zora: One of the main complaints I saw was that we’re losing the language, and we’re not going to hear specific words in the Code that fight against -isms. I understand this complaint from the perspective of wanting that written word for word, but I don’t think people are entirely aware that we have such strong institutional memory that in the future, if people want to put that language back in the Code, we have access to our previous Codes, and we can come back in the future in a different political climate and make a decision to put that back or, in my opinion, keep the new Code that encompasses our values. We have that choice because we take note of what we might need in the future and whether our opinions might change.

Ben Flig: I think that’s an important point, back to Anjali and institutional memory too. I want to think about what remembrance means in the context of student movements. Oftentimes, we think of “institutional memory” as words on a page, but even with the old language in the Code we need to remember that progress and justice and commitment to anti-racism is never secure. Even though this language isn’t in the Code, I want people to remember that the Code gives us the tools to act out our values. Whether or not the language in the Code contains specific commitments to justice, that justice is only ever achieved if we act it out in our day-to-day rather than just on the page or at Plenary.

Sofie: Another big goal of this was keeping the Honor Code student written. A huge concern of this was that if we were to explicitly write out these concerns, then it might not get passed at all by the administration. We would then lose any mention of these values that we are concerned for and, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to build on the Code now that sits back firmly in student hands, but that can be for the future.

Ben Flig: Even more important about the new language in the de is what we say about it. People didn’t talk about it enough and may have forgotten it was there. If we want the Code to be relevant we have to talk about it, so I appreciate all of the perspectives.

Ben PF: I wanted to address something I’ve been thinking about post-plenary, which is that one of the things I’ve heard from some people is that, if going back to the language from last year’s Code will have consequences for the college, we should allow that or invite it. We should stand up for what we believe in rather than “giving in”. I think that that perspective might come from a good place, but it is reckless and ignorant of what that actually means. I think it comes from a place of great privilege to say that and not think about what that means for students that could be harmed, when you are essentially inviting in retribution rather than actually trying to protect people. We’re not just talking about losing federal funding, which is actually extremely harmful just in itself, it’s also about risking actual safety for specific student groups on campus. It’s a tangible harm that comes to students. The harm that comes by redacting the more explicit/ideological language from last year, replacing it with more universal language, is a very marginal harm as opposed to what could actually happen if we kept that previous language.

Oliver: I would second what Ben is saying. Specifically, if Haverford were to act in isolation and not with other institutions or colleges, it is a vulnerable position we’d be in due to endangering our students and our finances. It’s also not an incredibly powerful vessel for advocacy in isolation. I think there are other venues and ways to make more effective advocacy to see progress.

Ben Fitz: I agree. I think we should advocate as students. But the safety of students on this campus should always be number one.

Ben Flig: That comes to the next question: what kind of advocacy should Students’ Council be doing? Of course we should be advocating for the Honor Code and students’ Constitution, but there’s a real question of what we as a body should be doing to both protect our peers and to advocate.

Victoria: Part of this perspective comes from being a past Co-President. At the end of the day, people will look to you two to represent a lot of the work and advocacy that is done as Students’ Council. What happened two years ago with Jorge and Maria is that they were super vocal on how they felt they should represent the Students’ Council during the peak of the Israel and Gaza conflict. They took an explicit stance and saw some barriers with that. Yehyun and I, we also took explicit stances against the policies that resulted due to the new administration and similarly faced some barriers. I think we were in an easier situation though. Any advocacy you do as Students’ Council has to be on behalf of students at the end of the day. I think Maria and Jorge were in a difficult position because there was a substantial portion of students who did not necessarily agree with them, but that’s just a part of the job. All four of us acted in good faith, aligning our work with what we believe/believed would benefit students the absolute most. I think my advice is, advocate for what students broadly are asking for. Advocate for students on issues that are directly impacting them. People expect you to lead in such a way.

Sarah: We are in the process of already doing that. That’s part of what I’ve been doing which is personal outreach, and that’s been insightful. We want to know how we can respond to students that may have given cons at plenary.

Sofie: I would encourage students who spoke at Plenary who take issue with the new Code, to come join us at CSCAR. We’re looking at expanding the body to include more than just the writing team. We’re not against dissenting voices if anything we encourage those voices to engage more, as the Code says to! If you have thoughts, please speak with us. If you can’t make it to our meetings, use our feedback form, engage with Ben and I directly, or whatever else. However Fizz is not a productive way for us to engage with you, since we don’t know who you are. I would encourage people to engage with us in good faith and allow us to give them the same in return.

Sarah: Dialogue is one of the most valuable things in understanding. That is how we move forward.

Anjali: I’d like to also give out a shoutout to Bryn Mawr’s SGA for hosting a strike remembrance week. I think Students’ Council does have a role in holding space for remembrance of past student advocacy. It can include ideas about when major changes in the Code were made in history. This is something that gets talked about in CSCAR. I was super impressed by Bryn Mawr’s strike remembrance week.

Sarah: I think intertwining that and making our own would be a good idea.

Oliver: I think that my answer to this is that I don’t think the co-presidents or members of StuCo generally should shy away from things that are being called political. Everything in our community may be considered political. The thing to be sure of doing is to involve, as much as possible, any stakeholders like the student body and others, to make sure what you’re doing is as representative as possible. I think there are things that we should be advocating for strongly, even if all of the students wouldn’t completely agree. I think it’s balancing those two things so that if advocacy is not just coming from you personally, but if it is a legitimate concern from a group of students, we have a mandate to be doing that advocacy even if we’re not advocating for something that is universally popular.

Sofie: I want to circle back to Anjali’s point earlier, that’s a really great idea. The Honor Code birthday party was an event Sarah chatted with me about earlier in the semester. What if that was more of a week where we do different educational events about the Code and at the end it culminates into a party? Maybe the first or second week when we get back from break so it’s not super busy.

Zora: Two things. I do believe that as a body that represents the Students’ Association, we should be taking stances that students generally agree with. I would also encourage that if the student body doesn’t feel that we’re representing their opinions or doing advocacy, to read our governing documents and come into open conversation with the students in those representative positions and tell us they want us to take a stand. For individual students, if possible, we should do more grassroots outreach into the local community. Haverford college has not a super long history of interacting with the low income community in Ardmore. Our students come from a place of privilege and if they want to engage with advocacy and support to the community, we need to reach out into that space and community. That might be a really big first step. If we could partner with the Marilou Allen office, we should.

Ben PF: Keeping the student body informed and on the same page is really important. Gathering information and getting it to people to help answer questions is something we can do. When people aren’t informed they’re more likely to cause harm.

Victoria: I like Zora’s point a lot. I think if that’s something you feel particularly strong about Zora, that’s definitely something you can start working on. The hardest thing about council, especially being on executive board, is that we might have a lot of pull, but we are also incredibly busy. So if you have the capacity and want to do that, that’s great and we think you should.

Sofie: On the topic of the walkout, this is more a question, but a concern I have is with how it was presented at plenary. It seems to me and some others that a demand was proposed by some students that they want to replace the Social Code with the old one. I don’t like the idea of the walkout being framed as such, that confused me. As a pro-socialist alternative person, I’m pro the walkout, but the setting in which it came up at plenary, a lot of students were confused.

Ben Flig: Who are people walking out against? What does walking out do? I’d appreciate more clarification, if you could provide that.

Ben Fitz: I’m happy to give the pitch. This is a walkout that’s being organized by the Sunrise Movement in accordance with other social movement organizations. national organizations are encouraging individual campuses to build specific demands for the administration. The goal is to make this a democratic movement that the entire student body would vote on what the demands are. As a result, the folks at Haverford YBSA had a meeting recently for students to discuss demands that they’d be interested in. We have a QR code where people can submit demands too.

We’re sensitive to concerns if this would bring pressure to Haverford specifically. Over a 100 schools participated in this on November 7th, and we doubt it will bring specific scrutiny to us. However we need enough students to vote for it to happen. Right now what it’s looking like is fighting for an increase in student wages. I am already talking to Oliver about this. I get that it’s a little hazy because we want it to be a product of democratic participation. I apologize for bringing it up last minute, but it’s something we want to be working with Students’ Council on.

Ben Flig: What I would say is that I would be hesitant to include a call for a walkout before there are concrete demands in our materials. I don’t think we should call for something when we don’t know explicitly what that thing is.

Sofie: I’d just like to encourage if this idea about Honor Code as non democratic is a popular one, we’d ask that as Students’ Council members, you work to defeat that claim. There have been a lot of calls for feedback, membership, and engagement with the Code. Seeing that message come up has been disheartening.

Zora: I don’t think many of the students who have been saying CSCAR and Students’ Council have been representing students have been reading their emails. CSCAR was open to all students. Everyone was invited to give feedback on the Code and social Code. There were posters put up for months with the opportunity to give feedback. There have been nearly infinite opportunities for every student, if they so chose, to put their input into CSCAR, if they felt that their voices had not been heard. Students’ Council cannot advocate for you if we don’t know what your requests are. There is an onus on students to tell us what they want. If we don’t know, we can only represent the voices of those who are engaging. We’re doing our best to spread out voices but all we can do is hope students tell us what they want. Read your emails, reach out to your student representatives, do what you want to get things changed, because you have a voice.

New Business 2

Sarah: We need to move on. We’ll go out of order for the sake of time. During plenary, Ben and I got an email from a student who was concerned about growing misconceptions about first generation and low income students. Particularly in response to negative attitudes towards Bi-Co Mutual Aid. I found this really concerning. They talked about comments they’ve received on what it’s like to be a low income student, and a lot of misconceptions like that other students pay for low income students’ tuition or that Bi-Co Mutual Aid is only for low income students. These are not true. Overall, attitudes that are cruel against low income students is a concern I’ve noticed and that this student has noticed. We are now planning a panel for first gen and low income students to have a platform where 5 or 6 students can speak and then have an open mic for students to share their experiences and issues they’ve faced at the college. We might talk about it to each other, but we don’t talk about it on a large scale and there are lots of misconceptions about FGLI students. If you are interested in this, please come talk to me.

I think it points to broader issues due to a lack of information and people knowing how financial aid works. I was talking to someone last week who didn’t even know how FAFSA worked because they’ve never had to apply, which makes sense! However, it can result in narrow perspectives or misinformed views regarding the experience of first generation or low-income students. Speaking as someone who pays for a portion of my tuition, I have to work at Haverford to pay my tuition. I think that people forget that you can work here for fun or because you absolutely have to. This is why we started paying student governance positions in the first place. Reach out to us if you’d like to engage, whether you’re reading this or on StuCo.

We’re also planning a gender-specific panel to address sexism on campus. I’ve been mistreated in my role due to misconceptions that Ben is the only president, or that I might appear to not be as involved in my role in comparison.

Ben Flig: This is not true! Sarah does so much.

Sarah: I’ve talked to other gender minority students on campus who are in leadership positions, and they’ve had similar experiences. But this panel is going to be in February, and it will be sponsored by GRASE Center and IDEA, and be a platform for folks to speak. We reached out to Honor Council, Women in STEM, Haverford Survivors Collective and others. It’ll be Students’ Council backed but if you know there’s a problem on campus or if you have a project, then plan that! There will be offices willing to sponsor you.

New Business 1

Sarah: The last retreat is in the works.

Ben Flig: The final supper perhaps…

Sarah: No one will die at this one though. No betrayals here! It might be at Wendy’s house, it might be at Dean McKnight’s house. The date we’re floating is December 4th. If it doesn’t work, I apologize, but we will probably be planning something for spring too. We’re talking to Wendy and Dean McKnight to see if it’ll happen. We’ll be hearing from lovely folks like the Co-Treasurers about budgeting. Ben and I believe it is definitely the hardest role on Students’ Council. We’ll also hear from the librarians on what they do. I might be giving a presentation with Ben about our role and things you can do to uplift your Co- to make sure you can help them in what they do.

Victoria: This might be for spring, but if we have another retreat in spring, it should be centered around students like you guys or people you know to take up roles in the future. Especially in executive board in particular. This also includes Honor Council. We should dedicate some time for an optional retreat to dive into the specifics of that.

Sarah: I think that’s a good idea. Anything else? Otherwise, just come to us about projects and ideas that you want to do whether it is or is not specific to your role.

Esme: this coming week, the COMLs have been working on organizing a thank you card drive for staff including Blue Bus, housekeeping, Campus Safety, etc. We’ll be tabling in the DC, and students can write to any staff member they know and we will hand them out before Thanksgiving.

Caroline: Just quickly before we end, a Facilities Fund update. We met with Don about two weeks ago. We have enough funding to renovate the old Lunt Cafe space into a new student dance practice space. Not the party space, but the space beyond that. This would be within our fund, so we would potentially have some left over for the mural. So we’d hopefully get to have two projects this year!

Sarah: I adjourn this meeting at 2:55pm.