As the 2024-2025 school year begins to wrap up, Haverford 2025-2026 Students’ Council members are preparing for the commencements of their terms. The Bi-Co News spoke with most of 2025-2026 Student Council members about their plans and excitement for the upcoming school year. Students’ Council Co-Presidents Ben Fligelman and Sarah Weill-Jones, Students’ Council Co-Vice Presidents Oliver Wilson and Grant DeVries, Students’ Council Co-Secretaries Victoria Haber and Caroline Yao, Honor Council Co-Chairs Michael Pyo and Sofie Quirk, and Joint Student Administration Alcohol Policy Panel Co-Head Jackson Cannon were interviewed.
What made you interested in running for this position? Do you have any specific policies or stances you would like to make the Haverford community aware of?
Ben Fligelman – Students’ Council Co-President
“Originally I wasn’t sure that the position of Co-Presidents was something where we could actually do a lot but I think there were two big things that changed that. I think the first one was looking at the state of the honor code. At Haverford, right now, the Honor Code is in really bad shape. Academic dishonesty is way up and trust in the Honor Code from faculty is way down. I feel like that’s the kind of thing that needs strong student leadership… The second thing more generally is about the administrative powers of the president. We have a lot of purview to control how the Student Government works.”
Sarah Weill-Jones– Students’ Council Co-President
“I think some of the main reasons that we also decided to run is that we’ve seen a lot of division in the Haverford community in the past couple years especially with the bureaucratic aspects of Haverford… We really want to work on bridging gaps and working on strengthening our student and staff relationships and also the relationships with students to each other.”
Caroline Yao – Students’ Council Co-Secretary
“We want to make sure that every incoming Stu-Co member has a knowledge base and we’re there as supporting members… I think that being on Stu-Co this year has given me insight on the fact that I want to remain serving in some way… I’ve seen what taking minutes looks like, I’ve seen how much work the current Co-Secretaries have done to build campus communication.”
Grant DeVries – Students’ Council Co-Vice President
“I think one of the main reasons I initially ran for this position is I see a lot of things you can change at Haverford; it just takes a lot of work to make those changes. Part of that work comes with knowing people on campus and through having been on Student Council for two years there are a lot of relationships I have formed with administration so it makes it a lot more possible to make substantial changes… One of the goals I have been working towards and will continue working towards next year is improving the dining center.”
Sofie Quirk – Honor Council Co-Chair
“I think restoring faith in the Honor Code is going to be important in coming years and increasing community engagement with the code by having more open dialogue and more transparency between Honor Counsel and the Student Body.”
Michael Pyo – Honor Council Co-Chair
“Something that we want to work on next year is how to handle and navigate AI as kind of this up and coming issue that we don’t really know how to handle. A lot of professors are still figuring it out and if they’re going to allow us students to use it.”
Jackson Cannon – Joint Student Administration Alcohol Policy Panel Co-Head:
“I was interested in this position because I saw that it was opening up and some of my upperclassmen friends told me about it and thought that I might be interested because I’m a Quaker bouncer. The co-head I’m going to be in this position with is also a Quaker bouncer and on the Quaker bouncer board, so we kind of already have sort of proximity to this work around alcohol policy.”
What do you hope to accomplish during your term? Why do you think this is important? How will it affect the Haverford community?
Ben Fligelman – Students’ Council Co-President
“I think the main thing I am hoping for is a change in student attitude around the way that people look at things like the Honor Code, plenary, and shared governance in general.”
Sarah Weill-Jones– Students’ Council Co-President
“One of our main goals is to fully promote self governance and make sure that students’ voices are heard and that they are prioritized. We also really want to prioritize student safety and the protection of student identities.”
Oliver Wilson- Students’ Council Co-Vice President
“I think one of our broader goals is to increase interest and engagement in Student Council and shared governance in general because I think the perception is that that’s been declining… part of what we see as the solution for that is getting things done so that people see that it can actually affect change.”
Victoria Haber – Students’ Council Co-Secretary
“Post COVID, socially students have experienced a lot of changes, the way in which we engage with our community is completely different. The ways we engage with each other on an individual grassroots level is also completely different. And so, ever since COVID Students’ Council has been working increasingly intentionally on how we make sure we are rebuilding our community that is to serve students and also to be bridging from administration to the student body.”
Michael Pyo – Honor Council Co-Chair
“Making sure that we’re including Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore students within the community and making sure that all schools and students in the Tri-Co have a good understanding of what the Honor Code looks like. So making sure that there’s investment from Swarthmore students, Bryn Mawr students, and Haverford students, I think will make for a really good, strong cohesive community.”
Jackson Cannon – Joint Student Administration Alcohol Policy Panel Co-Head:
“I think one of the main things that the students would look for us to do is to bring the alcohol policy to plenary so it can be reaffirmed… it’s definitely better in the interest of the safety of the students to have this policy that allows them with certain guidelines around safety to drink alcohol.”
Have you thought about how you may use your position to work with administration and other Student Council members against any positions of the Trump administration?
Sarah Weill-Jones– Students’ Council Co-President
“If we are not upholding our values and doing things that could actively be harming marginalized students that is not something we think is acceptable to comply with. We know that Haverford has a really strong student advocacy community and we’re really tight knit. We know that we can support each other through these unprecedented times and our student safety is paramount over anything else.”
Grant DeVries- Students’ Council Co-Vice President
“Our biggest power is that we are in meetings with the administration regularly. We can talk and bring up student concerns to these administrators. I think a lot of administrators are at least aware of the concerns, but they don’t actually know the students’ perspective for a lot of this.”
Victoria Haber – Students’ Council Co-Secretary
“Rather than being ones that will be the loudest in the room or giving the most perspective, what will be important for us is making sure that we are keeping records of the meetings that we’re in with administration, meetings that we’re in within our council regarding political tensions, related to the political federal landscape. And those are conversations that already have been happening right now in this current term for Students’ Council and I imagine for Honor Council as well. So with that, what we’ll really have to be focusing on is not only making sure how are we writing, how are we conveying this information, but how are we storing it?”
Sofie Quirk – Students’ Council Co-Head
“I think continuing to stand for Haverford’s values, however, that interacts and disagrees with the Trump administration’s policies will be important and obviously feelings are very, very high. Making sure we have a social code that adequately responds to any disrespectful political disagreements or harmful ideologies.”
Oliver Wilson – Students’ Council Co-Vice President:
“We won’t be directly in charge of the budget, but Student Council in general can do some tangible things to, like support affected students. Really everyone’s affected, but particularly affected students by the Trump administration’s policies.”
