Sarah Weill-Jones ‘26 has been a force for change in their four years at Haverford College, advocating for accessibility, administrative transparency and party safety, among other initiatives. Stepping into their new leadership role as Students’ Council Co-President alongside Ben Fligelman ‘26, they are putting years of experience into practice.
As enthusiastic and energetic as they are, it hasn’t been an easy path to walk. As co-president, Weill-Jones has taken on more responsibility for the student body’s concerns than ever, and with that has come revelations about points of weakness in how the community is enacting the Honor Code’s stated values of trust, concern and respect.
The Bi-Co News sat down with Weill-Jones to learn their story: In the past semester alone, they’ve faced blatant bias. They’ve been overlooked, and under-appreciated. What do they want now? Your attention, please.
Disability Advocacy Work
Weill-Jones understands what it is like to live as part of a marginalized group; at the age of seventeen, they became unexpectedly disabled. Having spent their whole life able-bodied, it was revelatory learning about the day-to-day difficulties they now faced. Support systems like family, health care and social circles all came with their own struggles.
Weill-Jones notes, “I was a disabled person that had support from my family, support from my friends and health insurance — and a white disabled person. So oftentimes my pain wouldn’t be discounted. And even then, I still had a lot of negative experiences. So I can’t imagine what that is like with other intersectional identities without the same support systems that I had.”
This was the catalyst for Weill-Jones’ entry into advocacy work. On campus, they have been a part of Disability Advocacy for Students at Haverford (DASH), accessibility advocacy with the office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA), and they have co-founded the Student Event Accessibility Committee. The Legal Clinic for the Disabled and the Delaware Community Legal Aid Society can also thank them for their work over the past two summers. The latter summer was also spent working part-time on Haverford’s campus, manually checking the braille on every sign in the KINSC (Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center).
“My freshman year, I definitely sent a lot of emails. I did a lot of self-advocacy,” they said. Since then, they’ve seen a marked cultural shift in student awareness of accessibility issues. Their leadership position is allowing them to push that shift further. “For years, I’ve been trying to push for an accessibility training for student clubs, similar to the Meeting of the Clubs (a mandatory meeting for all student organizations held at the beginning of the semester). … My position in StuCo has finally allowed me to really push for something like that to happen.”
The institutionalization of such support systems still has a ways to go in the bi-co, Weill-Jones says, despite the great team in the current Office of Accessibility. The office is made up of just three people: the director, assistant director and administrative assistant. “We just have so many students and so [few] people,” Weill-Jones says, “so it’s just a huge amount … of casework expected for such a small office on top of facing structural barriers.”
The recent lawsuit against Bryn Mawr over accessibility concerns and ongoing discussion of Haverford’s physical inaccessibility are just two demonstrations of the need for further support across both campuses. Weill-Jones noted particularly Haverford’s demonstrated need for an Assistive Technology Specialist, a position already filled at Bryn Mawr. The structural barriers to education that Weill-Jones described could be remedied, “if we got someone that specifically specializes in a system of tech to assist with things like making sure a PDF is accessible … and not only that, but assistive technologists to train our professors how to make their online resources accessible.”
Understandably, Weill-Jones is planning to continue their work after graduation, specifically going into public interest law to serve disabled people. They’re hoping to get into the “Partners for Justice” program, which places trainee client advocates in a public defense office.
The big-picture goal is simply to help people in their community. They’ve recently started work as a Disability Justice and Accessibility Specialist with “Mentor a Promise,” a nonprofit devoted to empowering youth facing housing instability. Down the line, their aspirations are boundless. “Maybe I’ll run for Philadelphia City Council,” they said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Translating Advocacy onto the Students’ Council Stage
This vision of community service is being realized in Weill-Jones’ leadership role in the Haverford Students’ Council this year, but their advocacy now encompasses a much wider breadth of issues.
Since they took office with Ben Fligelman last summer, the administration has been prioritizing transparency, student safety and accessibility. The first aim is being addressed through publication of StuCo meeting minutes on their website and in The Bi-Co News, and through spreading the word that all StuCo meetings are open to the community.
“I’ve noticed that students are actually coming to our general body meetings, which is really awesome because I want students to know that even if they’re not in an elected position, they can still come,” Weill-Jones noted.
Conversations with the Haverford Survivors’ Collective and the Joint Student Administration Alcohol Policy Panel (JSAAPP) Co-Heads regarding student safety have also been fruitful, and Weill-Jones is hoping that their initiatives regarding increasing the Quaker Bouncer presence on weekends and more rigorous party training for hosts will manifest in a safer campus overall. “I want students to feel as safe as possible, and that starts in every environment — not just in the classroom, but at parties,” they said.
Their favorite part of the job has been consistently talking with students, hearing their concerns and working towards making the changes those students want to see.
“I genuinely care about what students are feeling … I just want people to talk to Ben or I about the things that they’re experiencing … I don’t, you know, live in a fantasy world that everything at Haverford is perfect and that everyone here has to be happy all the time. I don’t want people to think that I want a reality affirmed for me that I think everything is fantastic at Haverford and [I don’t want people to think that I’m] like living in a bubble.”
Haverford is indeed a bubble in many ways — politically, the campus is overwhelmingly progressive. Yet Weill-Jones has been shocked by the amount of overt sexism they’ve faced since the start of their tenure.
“I feel like, at Haverford, we talk about being very self-aware of our biases and trying to be better,” they said. “Obviously, subconscious bias is a thing. It’s always going to be there. But I just — I don’t think I expected this degree of sexism.”
Weill-Jones says they are consistently asked if they are Fligelman’s vice president, or his assistant. Following Fall Plenary, they were asked where they had been by several people — they were in the center of the room, chairing the event. In conversations about college policy with older members of the community, they are often ignored. In meetings, Fligelman is always deferred to. Weill-Jones hastens to add, “It’s nothing against Ben. It’s just the unfortunate circumstances of our society’s expectations.”
This is not an isolated experience; talking to other female-presenting student leaders on campus, Weill-Jones has heard that they’re dealing with similar problems. Most aren’t willing to speak publicly about the issue, fearing their male co-heads will find it an uncomfortable reality to face.
“It’s kind of made other things difficult,” they said. The job is already arduous. Reckoning with sexism on the daily adds undue pressure, and they also feel called to try to remedy the problem on campus.
Working for Change
Getting the issue out in the open is step one. Most people they have spoken to have been shocked at the presence of such blatant bias on Haverford’s campus. But it’s not uncommon, even at a place so lauded for its welcoming nature and diverse student body. Misogyny thrives here too, and particularly in places of anonymity.
Last semester, The Bi-Co News published a series of articles exploring the controversy over Fizz, an app which facilitates anonymous discourse in localized areas. The bi-co has witnessed a proliferation of cyberbullying, sexist and racist messaging and generally harmful commentary on the app. Bryn Mawr recently voted to ban Fizz on its campus at their Fall Plenary, a resolution which garnered much debate and passed only narrowly. One vocal advocate for the ban was SGA President Esénia Bañuelos, who has been harshly cyberbullied on Fizz. Student leaders of marginalized groups are finding that the bi-co is not upholding the values of community its admissions materials espouse.
Bringing the reality of these biases in the bi-co into public discourse generally is important, Weill-Jones says, but it is not enough. They have also been working with the Gender Resources and Sexuality Education (GRASE) center and IDEA to create a panel led by gender minority students to talk about their experiences. The concrete event provides a more visible platform for the conversation. “This is not a new issue,” they said. “It’s been an issue at Haverford for years. And I wanted to make it clear to people that’s something we need to do better to recognize.”
It is also key that people with more privilege use that power to uplift others. “Oftentimes, one member of a pair that holds more privilege might not directly be contributing to the experiences that the other member might be facing, but they can actively use their privilege to bolster the other person to ensure that they’re being treated better,” Weill-Jones explained.
As much as they have given to their community over the last four years, Weill-Jones also acknowledges that it is exhausting to constantly be needing to create the support systems they see are lacking. They are conscious of a culture in which students demand a great deal from themselves, and grow overwhelmed by the mountain of work yet to be done.
If there is one thing they would like to say to the community at large, it is this: give yourself grace. “I see a lot of students that are overextended in a million different clubs and groups and as one of those students … it’s okay to take a step back. You don’t have to solve everything. And the only way that you can work to make things better is to take care of yourself first.”
1 comment
Woohoo! Shoutout to the GREATEST Co-President ever. . . (I’m not biased in the slightest, at all). Seriously though: it’s great that Sarah is finally getting their flowers. Thank you Jessica for the awesome article!