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 11/21
Friday, November 21, 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
Members Absent: Caroline Yao
Guests: Ian Trask
Next Meeting: Friday, December 5; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102
“Ah yes, the NORMIES.” – Ben Fligelman
- Call to Order
- Roll Call
- Adoption of Agenda
- Fords Form
- Old Business:
- Facilities Fund
- New Business 1: Updates from Meeting with Danielle Lynch
- Athlete/Non-Athlete Divide
- Club Sports
- New Business 2: Fizz Alternative? Featuring: The Multi-Talented Ian Trask
- New Business 3: Alternative Budgeting Structures
- Adjournment
Call to Order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 4:15pm.
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.
Ian: Hi, I’m the StuCo Web Master.
Fords Form
Victoria: We have one submission. It reads as follows:
“Hello! I noticed the following remark made in the 11.14 EB meeting:
“I appreciate those who posted on Instagram rather than Fizz. Those who contributed on Fizz tended not to contribute as productively.”
This speaks to a wider contention I’ve seen recently about Fizz that I wanted to comment on. Bryn Mawr’s plenary this past weekend had a resolution to, in some way, disconnect its endorsement of Fizz – I’m not sure of the actual language or whether it passed, but I know it’s something that’s been on a lot of people’s minds. I would even go so far as to say that, in my view, Fizz’s anonymous nature goes directly against the very ideals of accountability the Honor Code wishes to cultivate.
I was wondering whether StuCo has any specific thoughts on exploring alternatives for Fizz for the student body. I was looking through the Quaker and Special Collections archives recently, and I found that we used to have an online forum message board that was specific to Haverford students. I was thinking that bringing this back would be a great way to fill a gap in asynchronous communication options between students.”
Sarah: First, Ben and I agree that we think that Fizz goes against what the Code stands for in that it prevents confrontation and discourages discourse. There’s no way to engage in confrontation if you don’t know who you’re speaking with. We believe the behavior that was displayed towards Esenia was abhorrent, and we are appalled by how some students responded instead of engaging in productive dialogue. They made comments about her race and background. This is not how you get anyone to understand your perspective. Attacking someone for things that go beyond the actual resolution, and using personal qualms as an excuse to be racist is absolutely unacceptable. We are devastated that she was treated this way, and this is a clear example of how Fizz is destructive to the values we want to hold. We’ll elaborate more on this idea later in the meeting with Ian Trask. Thank you for your submission.
Old Business: Facilities Fund
Victoria: Regarding the Facilities Fund, today I met with Bryan Savage, the Facilities Project Manager. We chatted about mockups and other details for renovating the old Lunt Cafe space into a student dance space. We’ll be moving forward with starting soon!
Sophia: Have you considered the infrastructure requirements for poles?
Victoria: Yes. We chatted a lot about the ceilings in particular. There are a lot of pipes that run through the space that are crucial for the heating or plumbing in the building, so we have to keep them there. We won’t do a drop ceiling since it’ll look weird and conflict with placing poles. We’re approaching this with the intention of having poles able to be set up.
Ben Flig: I’m excited this is happening!
Sarah: Where will the mural be?
Victoria: We want to confirm the budgeting on this project first before we move onto the mural, so no updates on that right now.
New Business: Updates from Meeting with Danielle Lynch
Grant: Last week we met with Danielle Lynch and her department. It was a productive conversation. It was more informative than was anticipated. It was the right decision to not write a resolution. We’ve been given more free-range of the document we want to write. We aim to do that by the end of the semester. It’s good it will get written. They seem open to the concerns we brought. Having the ability to explain these experiences was eye-opening for her. While we can’t control aspects like facilities, teams getting kicked off, reasonable scheduling, this was chatted about thoroughly. The other part of the meeting was more interesting to me. We talked a lot about the relationship between athletes and non-athletes. She seemed surprised to hear from a student about the divide. She was open to talking about this and improving the relationship. We’ll see where that goes. I think that on the athletics side they seemed very interested. I chatted with Chris O’Conner about this as well, so we’ll work more on this.
Victoria: This sounds great. Could you elaborate again on the document itself?
Grant: I have an outline that I’m reviewing with Tyler. The goal of the document is to outline how athletics will work with club sports, what they can expect from the Athletics Dept, Student Life Office, and when/where club sports can use fields and which fields.
Oliver: It also includes funding expectations from Students’ Council regarding trainers.
Ben PF: Did you mention Customs and athletes?
Grant: Yes, I brought that up. She said everyone who is not a fall athlete should be attending. We met with Jodi, who expressed that this was not happening.
Ben Flig: Sarah and I chatted with Chris. He said that athletes don’t go to events because of overlaps with practices.
Ben PF: Yes, but that’s true only for fall athletes. And even then attendance for athlete students overall is low, including during Customs Week itself when they are expected to attend or make up sessions regardless of missing practice.
Grant: The concern also with that is it has impacts on community involvement with sports in general. When you don’t have friends who are athletes, or athletes don’t attend these kinds of events, then often games are low-attended. When I go to games, students generally are not there, mostly parents from either team. I want to improve that.
Ben Flig: Going forward, the new Customs Co-Heads should work to schedule customs events in a way that they don’t conflict with athletics, and work with athletics to make the importance of events known when there are conflicts.
Victoria: I think it’d be helpful for athletics to also work closely with Customs Co-Heads so that there are equal stakes in scheduling.
Grant: Yes, Danielle also wanted to know what else she could do to improve the relationship.
Ben PF: Generally we should integrate more with the Student Athlete Advisory Committee.
Grant: I was told that the group mainly meets to vote on NCAA proposals, so it might not be entirely useful.
Ben PF: Maybe down the line we can meet with them to establish a working relationship at least. Even if it’s not things they work on right now, they could expand their role.
New Business: Fizz Alternative? Featuring: The Multi-Talented Ian Trask
Sarah: This week has been interesting regarding conversations about Fizz. We talked about Fizz in the beginning of the year and the potential problems it could pose. Last week those problems came to fruition. We saw this behavior as pointed out by the student in the Fords Form, particularly against Esénia Bañuelos, the SGA President at Bryn Mawr. Ben and I want to make sure the treatment she faced never happens here. We’ve been chatting with Ian about improving Haverford’s community and in turn preventing this.
Ian: Fizz has problems because it’s anonymous. I downloaded it for the purpose of this and I was shocked by what I saw. Ben and I discussed options about where to go regarding Fizz at Haverford. Those ideas include coding a Fizz alternative. This could be done because it’s a pretty simple app. Or, I could make a website alternative with plugins which would also be feasible. Additionally, a third party alternative is also possible, but that would be redundant.
Sarah: I’d also like to mention that Fizz profits off of us using the program. Wouldn’t it be better if we had a program for students made by students? I think that’d be great.
Ben Flig: I think that having an app would be better than a message board. Being mindful, I think creating an app is something we could get you compensated for if you are truly interested. That would be the best outcome in my opinion.
Ian: I know people who would be interested in working with me on that.
Ben PF: A team would be good. I’m sure it would be possible to have an app that is web-friendly too. Haverford and the Bi-Co have had different iterations of online message boards. There’s a lot of history of anonymous ones violating the Code. Basically, this has all happened, so I think it’s worth making something we can moderate internally.
Ian: I would like to know specifically what people would like in the app. Community opinion and your opinions would help.
Ben PF: It should not have up and down votes. I think it’s a reductive way of judging people’s opinions without saying anything. It’s not useful in any way. It makes the goal of posting getting the most upvotes.
Ben Flig: I don’t know if I agree.
Ben PF: If we are judging what someone posts, you should say something rather than just voting.
Ben Flig: I think the app needs some sort of way to dictate what should be shared with others.
Ben PF: But I don’t think it should be algorithmic.
Victoria: Maybe the compromise is just sorting posts by the date they are posted?
Ben PF: Yea, there could also be sorting by categories.
Sophia: Or just searching for words in general.
Ben Flig: Making an app that has general information about things going on would be helpful, like parties, the hours of the libraries and DC. It could mirror the NYT app that has different boards you can post to.
Ben PF: Swarthmore has their own version of this.
Ben Flig: I’ve also thought about how anonymity is corrosive, but if there is a way that people can ask questions that they’re embarrassed to ask with their name attached.
Victoria: Q&A?
Ben Flig: Right, maybe a moderated anonymous Q&A.
Victoria: I wonder though as a whole if having an internal system to moderate is feasible though. Students who are hired as moderators will naturally be a conflict of interest with certain postings, and I can imagine if others know who moderators are, it could cause a lot of chaos. It also just sounds like an overwhelming job anyways, but that’s just me.
Ben PF: We should just urge a community where we can ask questions with our names attached.
Ben Flig: True, but we can’t cold shock people.
Victoria: I think Ben PF’s perspective is really valid, even if it may seem extreme. There shouldn’t have to be shame behind asking a question. I will say I get the social aspect of it, but I would still like to think more broadly–what is it about your question that makes it embarrassing to have your name attached to it? Is there truly a negative consequence? For some cases, I think that anonymity allows people to ask/say some nasty things on there, so in that sense, if a question is truly productive, then we ought to be comfortable attaching our name to it.
Sophia: If you have an events board, then we don’t need to ask anonymously anyways.
Ben PF: Right, we have an events page anyways and collect that information, public parties are already all registered. All of the QBs have party information for example.
Ian: Fizz is Bi-Co, would we want to mirror that model?
All agree.
Sophia: We should chat with the E-Board about this then, since they’re facing the most harm.
Sarah: Anything else? Thank you Ian for your help and perspective!
New Business: Alternative Budgeting Structures
Ben PF: We were thinking of changing how budgeting works. It doesn’t make sense for the Co-Treasurers to do all of this work in such a short time period. Historically it has not typically worked this way and it’s an unsustainable amount of work for only two students.
Sophia: It’s specifically about the labor distribution of policy refusals. With a handful of minor exceptions, pretty much everything we denied was for policy reasons. I imagine that’s been true consistently in the past, especially since we’ve developed more rigorous policies this year. We’ve chatted about creating a budgeting committee that would be the first line of communication to address policy violations and encourage students to revisit their budgets. A concern with that is that we’re adding a middle man, but it would give us time to respond to emails and meet more with students. Is that body useful in everyone’s opinion?
Ben PF: Based on research I’ve done on other schools and previous Haverford budgeting strategies, there are committees consisting of some number of people who are split to each represent a number of clubs. That person then does an initial review and checks that those budgets are in policy, and then once approved, the budget would reach an executive approver, like us. We were thinking we’d appoint community members rather than Students’ Council members so it’d be a community process to increase knowledge about this.
Sophia: I’m worried though that we’re making too many jobs.
Ben PF: The class reps could help if not community members.
Oliver: The issue with appointments is just the timeline of getting things done relative to when you would need people ready and trained. We discussed this before with Jodi about how people can commit to things in the spring but not be available in the fall.
Ian: Somewhat related, if there was a completed list of all policies that people would have to check off of following, maybe that could help?
Ben PF: We have checks, but people don’t often follow them even when it’s in their face.
Sophia: We talked about this and making the policies more available. That’s hard though since you can find it in the Meeting of the Clubs and on the website with a Google search. There’s a desire to make info more available, but how do you make it more available that goes beyond that effort? Since positions are always cycling too, this information isn’t consistently guaranteed to be understood consistently across one individual club.
Ben PF: If we did something like forming a committee, we’d bring it to Spring Plenary after workshopping it with the incoming Co-Treasurers once they’re elected.
Sarah: That adds to our goals of fiscal transparency too. Is there anything else? I adjourn this meeting at 4:57pm.
General Body Meeting 11/23
Sunday, November 23, 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, Jack Weinstein, Vivian Ross, Ben Fitzgerald, Jonathan Lee, Zora Kuehne, Julie Edelstein, Esme Dorsey, Isabela Azumatan Aceituno, Ian “Big T” Trask, Zoe Hartmann, Pratyusha Katiyar, Hannah Mattison, Chris O’Conner, Sofie Quirk, Jackson Cannon
Members Absent: Conner McWhan, Hettie Van Dyke, Isaac Kemokai, Abigail Trapp, Leo Ni, Michael Pyo, Anjali Agarwal
Guests: Quentin Cooper, Emma Fauser, Adam Marcello, Luke Sabolchick
Next Meeting: Sunday, December 7th; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101
We got a coding queen over here! – Victoria
- Call to Order
- Roll Call
- Ford’s Form
- Old Business:
- Next Steps on the StuCo Surplus
- New Business 1: Appointments to the Corporation Committee
- New Business 2: Discussion of Bryn Mawr Plenary & Fizz
- New Business 3: Honor Code x CSCAR Programming — “Honor Code Week”?
- New Business 4: Strike Week Programming at Haverford
- New Business 5: Member Projects for Next Semester
- Adjournment
Call to Order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 2:05pm.
Victoria: Guests, please state your names for the minutes.
Emma: Hi, I’m Emma, a First-Year, she/her.
Quentin: I’m Quentin, a First-Year, he/him.
Adam: I’m Adam, he/him, Sophomore.
Luke: I’m Luke, he/him, Sophomore from Pitt.
Fords Form
Sarah: Do we have any Fords Forms?
Victoria: None that are new.
Old Business
Ben Flig: We’ll go over the surplus budget. Moving into the end of this semester and the next, we’ll want to begin soliciting feedback on what to do with the surplus.
Sophia: I’m just curious how that would comport with the idea of the endowed fund.
Ben Flig: In my mind, I like the idea of it. We should talk to students about if this is something they want and can support. This is a large amount of money so we need buy-in to ensure that we’re using the fund safely. My primary hope in the coming weeks is that you will all ask around and raise awareness. I’m thinking we should send out at some point some forms discussing this, hold a townhall, and/or hopefully by the end of the spring semester we’ll make concrete moves on what to do with it.
Ben PF: My idea was to maybe put it to a Plenary resolution, at least the endowment part of it.
Ben Flig: Sounds cool to me.
Sophia: I’d also want to make it clear in any feedback we solicit that this money shouldn’t and can’t be used for things that other departments on campus are already doing. A thing that we often get is that students want the Dining Center to be better. Me too! We’re already doing that through the Dining Advisory Committee and other avenues, and the money is not enough that it would make a meaningful difference. It has to be a one-time capital investment. This is to avoid the problem that Byrn Mawr had where they used up all their surplus on annual expenses
New Business 1
Sarah: Co-VPs, did you want to update us?
Oliver: The Corporation Committee is looking for a student representative. It discusses things related to the Corporation of Haverford which is technically the highest governing body at the College. It’s made up mostly of alumni. Some of their responsibilities include appointing people to the Board of Managers. They want it to be someone who can serve at least two years, so at least a junior, and who is committed to not going abroad. The term will start in this upcoming spring, so ideally actually it would be a current sophomore who would be interested.
Grant: Some of you seem to be interested. Keep an eye out for a message from us on how to apply.
New Business 2
Sarah: We will discuss a bit about Bryn Mawr Plenary and Fizz. The results have not been released to the student body yet, so we won’t chat about it. It’ll come out tonight at 8pm, but we do want to cover some stuff we saw on Fizz in the past week. We want to say the treatment of Esénia — Bryn Mawr’s SGA President — was abhorrent on Fizz. I know that we talked about it earlier in the semester that Fizz is antithetical to Haverford values and the Honor Code. You confront someone at Haverford to create dialogue but on Fizz you don’t know who they are; we think that Fizz creates a platform that spreads harassment and racist ideas, instead of creating community.
For those of you who don’t know, last week at Bryn Mawr’s Plenary, there was a resolution to unaffiliate BMC from Fizz. Instead of engaging in meaningful dialogue and discourse with the resolution writers and Esénia, there were over 300 posts put on Fizz attacking her and the writers. Many of these posts included things saying she lacked decorum and was aggressive due to her background and culture, which is blatantly racist. It was bad. We want to make sure this never happens here and that we are abiding by the Social Code, so we wanted to talk about what we can do to create a platform for Haverford students, by Haverford students. Fizz makes a profit off of students using the platform, and we lose interest in our Code when we engage in this way. I want to highlight Ian and Emma, because they are both working on alternatives to Fizz. Do you both want to share?
Emma: I have been looking into an alternative for a message board platform because at one point for a project in class I was looking at Quaker Collections and saw we used to have a forum messaging board online. I was looking into what we need to reestablish this. I printed out some QR codes of a demo that I set up live for everyone to look at.
*StuCo takes a minute to scan QR codes.*
Emma: One of the advantages about this platform is that this software, XenForo, costs $200 for lifetime license, so we can just host it easily. I thought that this was really neat and something we could potentially have as some mass communication alternative to Fizz.
Ben Flig: My first question is if there is mobile integration.
Emma: There is not a mobile app, but you can still access it on the mobile browser.
Oliver: How easy is it to use it on a mobile device?
Emma: The interface is similar. It’s not like an old website where it’s not compressed. It is compressed to fit.
Sarah: How does this help to hold us accountable?
Emma: I was looking into authenticity. There is an integration with Microsoft. The Haverford and BMC accounts are signed in through Microsoft, and we can implement the same thing on this forum.
Sarah: So, their email would be attached?
Emma: It gets into implementation details, so your username might have to just be the username for your email. Or, the administrators of the forum have the ability to check an individual account.
Sarah: I do want to set aside that I think Fizz has been useful for certain things like asking questions that could be seen as embarrassing, like about parties. Would there be a board that we could put all the events on or something, so people wouldn’t have to ask?
Emma: Potentially. One of the nice things about XenForo is that it has existed for about 15 years. It has extensible add ons. Anything that hasn’t been implemented, we can add on using base codes. We can customize it to our purposes. I suspect there’s a plugin that can dedicate a form to events.
Elena: When you’re talking about the email aspect, is this going to be anonymous? Will people make usernames that could be non-identifiable?
Emma: This would be up to how whoever is running it wants to set it up and monitor it. It comes down to what authentication methods can be used to create an account and what the settings are.
Chris: Who would be monitoring it? I know on Fizz things can get taken down and stuff, who would be doing that for this?
Emma: Because it would be hosted on Haverford’s servers, it would be up to us. In the past it was Students’ Council that monitored old forms. It would be up to however we want to implement it if we have separate non-affiliated moderators, or if they were Students’ Council members. That’s the advantage of it compared to Fizz, it’s not some corporate overlord, but on campus. Every account has to have an email associated with it.
Sarah: Ian, would you like to share?
Ian: I haven’t done anything physical yet. We’ve been chatting with Exec Board about making an app alternative to Fizz that did implement a lot of the features we’ve discussed, like being not as anonymous, and still having a connection to Bryn Mawr.
Sarah: Is there a chance you both would like to collaborate?
Ben Flig: I’m thinking about two things. One, I want to know if there’s a way to integrate with BMC. One of the few things Fizz does right is that it is Bi-Co. The fact is, most of the people who use Fizz are BMC students. The second thing is mobile app integration, one of the big reasons Fizz is successful is you can use it on your phone and easily make a post. There’s more friction with a forum. If you two could work together and find out a way to integrate this with a mobile app that would be humdinger!
Emma: I think both of those would be possible.
Hannah: It’s not like creating an app, but if you open the QR code, you can create something that turns it into an app on your home screen, so it’s almost like that.
Ian: There’s ways to turn websites simply into apps depending on the platform.
Victoria: I also really like this idea. I am friends with a number of students who aren’t as involved with what’s going on right now. I would want to ensure that there is a very clear and succinct reasoning disseminated to the student community on how we got here. There’s a good portion of the community who would die on the hill for Fizz just because they may not know what went on.
Sarah: I digress, there are many good things about Fizz, but the cons definitely outweigh. We’ll be clear on communicating that.
Sofie: I would similarly request if this would require Haverford un-partnering with Fizz. I don’t know if people would leave Fizz on their own volition.
Ben Flig: Two things. First I think there’s a lot we can do as student leaders to say, stop using Fizz and use our platform instead. The second thing is that we can do things with this platform that can make it better than Fizz. The way that people find out about parties tonight is they ask, “Funks? Tonight??” And some upperclassmen may provide some information. One of the things we as Students’ Council has an advantage is we can figure out when parties are since they’re registered on Student Life, and so we can access that and integrate it into the platform. I would hope in an ideal world that we can un-partner with Fizz, but I think that it would work even better to create something that is already better than Fizz.
Sophia: I think there is an argument for doing a Plenary resolution anyways. That’s something I’m considering bringing. This is something we’ll chat more about once we see what happens tonight at Bryn Mawr. I think it might be worth pursuing a more formal option too.
Elena: To add, I think that would go down easier if we already had an alternative set up and used anyways. We should balance that. I was also thinking about with moderation, is that censorship was a concern at Bryn Mawr. I think we should be very careful with who we choose to moderate with this forum, because people are sensitive about what they can say online.
Sarah: You’re right, so maybe we can get HC involved.
Zora: Two things. One, depending on the results tonight, I think if we integrate a resolution, we can include information about the process Byrn Mawr did to get to this if we did our own resolution. The second thing is that I know a lot of people say, whether accurate or not, that we have too much of a say over what students can say or are integrated in. A lot of the complaints we saw were about CSCAR. Do I think it’s accurate, no, but I think it’s a problem that prevails online. If we set up a different system, we set up a moderation system of non-Students’ Council students. Fizz has a moderation system that includes some real students here at Haverford.
*Caroline, who is writing minutes, would also agree with the caution of Students’ Council having too much centralized say or power over these matters.*
Sofie: I was wondering if the moderator position should be its own election, and those students can sit-in as members on Students’ Council and Honor Council. Also, if we want to work on differentiating this platform, we can have multiple channels – like funks and ask an Honor Council member channel, since there are a lot of questions we get related to what we do or about clarifications.
Emma: One other feature is that you can send direct messages that are more informal than emails.
Ben PF: In the past, the GoBoards were an online forum space for the Bi-Co around in 2002 to 2018, and they were run by the group FIG which stands for Fig is Good. It was the Bi-Co’s student Computing Group, so a club of regular students, and they ran a bunch of other things too and I believe the moderator for the forums was appointed by Students’ Council as a community member.
Sarah: Are you guys excited for more appointments?
Grant: We are always excited for more appointments.
Chris: My question is about the Plenary resolution at BMC. Are they completely detaching from Fizz and removing themselves or is it more like, hey guys, let’s leave Fizz?
Sophia: I recently learned about what the process going forward would look like, provided that the resolution passed. The SGA Secretary will reach out to Fizz via email and ask to be removed from the platform. If not successful, the Head of Library Services would do that.
Ben PF: Because the library is in charge of the internet apparently.
Ben Flig: From a Haverford standpoint, we’re fortunate that BMC is doing it first so we get to see what works and what doesn’t and we are grateful to that.
Sarah: I feel we kind of have an idea of how to move forward. Is there anything else people want to say?
Zora: In the 90s, when there were the original message forms, there was an Honor Code case due to a serious instance of racism. I don’t think those platforms were anonymous, I don’t know, but I wonder if there’s a chance that that could happen again. It’s one student making derogatory comments to another demographic group— the Social Code case Charlie’s Angels.
Ben Flig: This is something that moderation can prevent and this is an issue anyways in person to person communication, which is related to our next topic.
Sarah: Some people will continue to go against the Social Code, and even if it’s not explicitly derogatory language, things they say might still be against the Social Code. Either way we can see who makes what comments and open a case.
New Business 3
Ben Flig: Part of fighting the toxin of Fizz and poor community engagement is strengthening the aspects of our community that we already have like the Honor Code. At the last meeting, some might remember that we wanted to have some post-Honor Code ratification/CSCAR programming. I’m curious if that is something we want to do, and if so, what do we think? If we go forward with it, it would be during the second week after break.
Sofie: I think that would be super fun, that’s a great way to get people excited about the new Code in spring and when it will be in full effect and a way to garner more support ! Really, any support for CSCAR and Honor Council can be helpful. We’re going through a structural change at the moment.
Chris: What if a Bryn Mawr student would make a statement that would violate our code?
Sarah: They can be brought to a proceeding at Haverford as well.
Ben Flig: I would say that because the Code is not a system of laws, they won’t conflict with each other.
New Business 4
Sarah: For Honor Code programming, we would probably want to start planning now. Is there anyone who is interested? Great, we’ll reach out. Speaking of more programming, we also think it’s important to create a Strike Week at Haverford. Next semester we’re starting a new initiative where everyone will have their own project, and this will be one of them. If you don’t want to create your own project, this could be your project. We want to model what Esénia did not only by highlighting the 2020 Strike but highlight activism at the college. We’d like to curate a permanent installation. Who would be interested in starting strike week programming as their project?
Ian: I could make a nice webpage for it.
Ben Flig: Even if you don’t raise your hand now, you can get involved with this down the line.
Sarah: We’ll be talking to Esénia to see what she did. I really want to see if we can get the author of Sabrina Speaks to chat with us, but we’re having issues with communication in general to alumni. Sometimes people are hard to reach.
Victoria: I have a connection! 🙂
New Business 5
Sarah: Speaking of projects, there are some other ones we’re thinking of. If none of these projects resonate with you, you will tell Ben and I what project you want to be involved in by the end of Winter Break. For example, Victoria and Caroline are leading the Facilities Fund to renovate a new student dance space and get a mural on campus. We’ll also be looking at Quaker Bouncers, to expand training and programming. We’re thinking Isabela and Jackson would be leading that as JSAAPP Co-Heads. There’s some more roles we will introduce at Plenary. Customs Committee Student Liaison is one. This will formally have a Liaison between StuCo and Customs.
Sophia: Quick question about new roles, do we know where the funding for that is coming from?
Sarah: Not yet.
Oliver: I’d say for one or two new roles, it is not extraordinarily difficult to convince relevant offices to help pay for it. If you think about the hours and amount we get paid, it wouldn’t be much of a financial burden. Just not 30.
Sarah: There’s only two that we are looking at, so not a lot. For now, we were thinking of asking Julie and Elena to help. To clarify, you guys would be drafting a resolution to help create this role. We would just be asking you both to collaborate on writing.
Julie: This would be great to involve these two groups together more.
Chris: Will this be elected or appointed?
Sarah: It’ll be up to Julie and Elena. No one is filling this now.
Sarah: The next role is the BMC SGA Liaison to be a point of contact with Bryn Mawr’s SGA. Who wants to help?
Zora: I would.
Ben Flig: Bryn Mawr has had this position but the Liaison has just never come to a meeting. So if they don’t come to us we’ll come to them.
Sarah: Does anyone want to collaborate on that with Zora?
Victoria: Caroline and I would be interested. Also, if people don’t have much experience writing resolutions, you can come talk to us and Grant and Oliver. We’d be happy to help.
Sarah: Great. Ben and I also have projects related to creating panels and club accessibility training. You guys can really come up with any type of project whether it’s related to your role or not. We are also looking for students to be involved in looking at finding places on campus and re-furnishing them.
Victoria: Like the basement?
Sarah: Yes! We also have a furniture committee on campus, so we can find pre-existing furniture that’s not being used. Are there any other projects that people want to work on that hasn’t already been said?
Zora: I spoke about this last week but I’m working on a partnership with the Marilou Office of Service. I talked to Emily Johnson on Friday to set up a collaboration so we can do some larger volunteer projects with the community.
Sophia: Ben and I have been talking about looking at the funding and budgeting of some of the historically funded clubs and doing some audits, just to make sure we’re all on the same page and have more transparency.
Sarah: Sounds great!
Coco: I would be interested in doing some sort of mentorship program that connected international students with international faculty.
Sarah: Do you want help?
Coco: Since it’s a faculty thing, maybe our Officer of Academics when we elect our new one.
Sarah: Cool.
Oliver: I have been thinking about writing for the spring, an institutional memory document about the college’s budget.
Sarah: This is great. If you haven’t jumped on a project, let us know soon.
Esme: I’m not sure if this is a question … .but we all know the emails that we got from Dean Mcknight and President Raymond. I was wondering if there’s anything that Students’ Council is involved in related to searches?
Ben Flig: Typically for the search for the President, there are two students. One was a Co-President, the other was not. The committee will not have anyone who is graduating this year due to the fact Wendy is retiring in July 2027, so the oldest grade will be juniors, if applicable even. In terms of finding replacements, there will be students on those committees. If things continue as they have continued in the past, there should be students on that committee.
Ben PF: There were five students on the Dean’s search committee when Dean McKnight was hired, so if we have that again that’d be great. It worked out really well last time so clearly student representation is good!
Sarah: We know this week has been tough. If you are stressed about it, please come talk to us.
Ben Flig: It’s normal for the Dean and President to leave at the same time. This is not like some divine hammer that has come down and reaped out senior staff! When there’s a new President, that President typically selects a new Dean of the College for the students.
Oliver: Although, not in this case right? Since the timeline is different.
Sofie: I will follow up about this since I have a meeting with Scott and Dean McKnight tomorrow.
Emma; If anyone else has any more questions about this forum thing let me know, I will stay behind.
Sarah: Thank you so much for this, it’s really incredible.
*Everyone claps, Oliver sounds a horn, Ben tweaks over it.*
Sarah: This meeting is adjourned at 2:58pm. I will put a doc into the slack with all the projects, please put your name where you want to work.
