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 09/12
Friday, September 12, 2025; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102
Members Present: Ben Fligelman, Sarah Weill-Jones, Oliver Wilson, Grant DeVries, Sophia Goss, Victoria Haber, Caroline Yao
Members Absent: Ben Perez-Flesler
Guests:
Next Meeting: Friday, September 19; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102
“I wish we were a historically Shaker school” – Sarah Weill-Jones “It would be a sex free campus” – Oliver Wilson
- Call to order
- Roll Call
- Adoption of Agenda
- Fords Form & Feedback!
- Old Business:
- Appointments Committee Report
- Librarians
- Officer of Arts
- Next meeting
- Plenary retreat alternative
- Appointments Committee Report
New Business 1: CSCARCSCARUpdate surrounding Sofie Quirk and Ben PF CSCAR workFurther distribution next weekTown halls; wanna attend and help?
- New Business 2: Allocation of Plenary Roles
- Will be further discussed in Gen Bod BUT does anyone know things they want to assist with?
- Plenary documentary?
- New Business 3: Future guests?
- Who do you want to see at your Students’ Council Executive Board?
- Updates from your Co-Secretaries
- Updates from your Co-VPs
- New Business 4: Funding for Community Housing
- Budgeting Committee
- Adjournment
Call to Order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 4:22 pm.
Victoria: More than half of Exec board is in attendance. Quorum has been met.
Ben Flig: I move to adopt the agenda. I also move to approve the minutes. Any concerns? The agenda is adopted and the minutes are approved.
Fords Form
You asked about feedback on Fizz. Personally I do not use it, and I am not a fan of some of the stuff I’ve heard is said on there. HOWEVER, last week one of the members of a campus org I’m a part of advertised one of our events on Fizz and it nearly doubled past years’ attendance. For whatever reason that post reached people who never would have heard about our event through other channels. So that’s a plus side you may want to consider.
Ben Flig: I think that’s interesting. Ideally there would be a form that’d reach students that wasn’t anonymous and poisonous.
Sarah: Or, a forum regulated by Haverford’s Honor Code where students can choose to be anonymous or not. By being regulated by the Honor Code we can control if there are posts that could be detrimental. I think it was brought up before, but there may be times someone might want to ask something they consider embarrassing, and we want to offer that space.
Oliver: I’m not sure if Fizz would go for that.
Sarah: I’m suggesting an alternative, because you’re right. Thanks for your feedback.
Old Business
Sarah: I’d love to hear the appointments committee report from today.
Grant: We sent out the emails to those who were appointed and rejected. The people who were appointed include all librarian positions. They’ll hopefully join us on Sunday.
Oliver: As for the Officer of the Arts, we’re going to conduct interviews.
Grant: There was no real consensus for who to appoint, so we want to discuss more.
Ben Flig: The next appointments committee meeting will be next Friday?
Grant: It’ll be based on other’s availability.
Sophia: Is the next one when you’ll appoint the Administrative Advisory Committee (AAC)?
Oliver: We emailed them about getting student appointments, but we did not get contacted back. We’ll reach back out.
Sarah: For other committees, like the Dining Advisory Committee, how much interest are we getting?
Grant: It’s hard to gauge right now. Many applications come in during the last hour. There are 11 right now.
Sophia: Some of my first years plan on applying!
Grant: Ask us again on Monday!
StuCo Retreat
Ben Flig: We discussed doing a StuCo retreat on the weekend of the 27th/28th. Pendle Hill is not available on this date, so instead of doing a StuCo retreat, we were thinking of doing a series of two to three dinners at Dean McKnight’s house, to get the same wonderful knowledge with the same wonderful food, but without having to plan a venue where we stay over. This would be less of a burden on the budget.
Oliver: I assume Dean McKnight has agreed to this?
Sarah: Yes, but no concrete plans have been made yet though.
Ben Flig: I talked to him on Wednesday.
Sophia: Is the vision supposed to be consecutive or sporadic?
Sarah: It’d be like a series. Do we like it? Do we hate it?
Oliver: I think that sounds like a good solution.
Victoria: If you do it sporadically, I just want you to be attentive to what knowledge you open with at the first meeting, since we’ll probably have a lot of work done as a council. Certain information at that point might be more or less crucial.
Grant: The main takeaway I got from the retreat was the fact it served as a bonding experience. If we only do dinners we might forgo a lot of that.
Sarah: The issue is, that we’re just too late to get a full retreat planned.
Grant: Maybe we could do something else focused on being fun as a council.
Sophia: Maybe a day trip?
Ben Flig: My thought was that ultimately the dinners would have some period where there’s a presentation, but also having time to talk and just hang out for the full council to get to know each other. That will be good to get the council together. Bonding is best done over food!
Grant: Cool.
CSCAR
Ben Flig: No CSCAR discussion since Sofie and Ben [PF] are not here, but observant students will notice that there are 11 inch by 17 inch posters all across campus promoting students to join! If you’re interested, sign up through the QR Code or email Ben PF, Sofie Quirk, Honor Council, or anyone related! We’re so excited about this!
Plenary
Sarah: So Plenary roles, we know this is a collaboration. We’ll talk more about this in our general body meeting, but we wanted to start bringing up what roles people might be interested in and how to delegate. There’s a lot of different stuff that goes into it. It’s inherent that Sophia and Ben PF do the budget as Co-Treasurers. There’s also aspects like food and transportation, Zoom logistics, day of set up logistics, etc. And workshops that Ben [Flig], Tori, and I will do. The spreadsheet is in the Slack to see the role descriptions. Anything else that others think should be on the spreadsheet?
Grant: I’m happy to help with plenary workshop resolutions.
Oliver: I’m also happy to help with workshops, but also with treasuring.
Sarah: Ben [Flig] and I picked two days for workshops. They will be Tuesday Sept 23 6-7pm and Oct 7 6-7pm.
Oliver: That works.
Victoria: In that case, I’ll take a step back.
Sarah: Why don’t we do one where Ben [Flig] and I lead, and then Oliver and Grant can lead one?
Victoria: I think we’re overthinking this. My suggestion is for you to take a look at the topics for the two slides I sent you both, and then figure out who needs to even be there. Yehyun and I led both meetings and had everyone else on the committee help review resolutions in a separate meeting.
Ben Flig: We’ll talk more in Gen Bod.
Sophia: Ben [PF] and I can do food. We’ve been talking among ourselves to reconfigure some of the food for plenary anyways. It would make sense if we were a point person on that.
Sarah: That sounds good.
Caroline: We’re all going to be busy the day-of so a lot of those tasks are very difficult. For example, Victoria and I will be writing all of the minutes, so it’ll be best to keep talking in Gen Bod.
Ben Flig: Also, I was considering the possibility of finding a student to work on a Plenary Documentary. It’d be good for institutional memory perhaps.
Sophia: Ben PF has someone in mind.
Grant: Can you elaborate?
Ben Flig: Yes. A documentary that maybe would include interviews with StuCo members for plenary, some interviews with people who went to the CSCAR town halls. The documentation behind what old plenaries looked like doesn’t exist or is gone, and I wish I knew what it looked like.
Sophia: I can send you some references that I think might be the aesthetic you’re going for.
Future Guests
Ben Flig: So who do you guys want to see at Exec Board? Do we long to see Jesse Lytle again?
Caroline: Jess Lord!
Grant: Having Tyler and Danielle Lynch would be great. Some of the ways I’ve been hearing how club sports are being treated on campus is unacceptable if this campus is to maintain, in any reasonable terms, that they “support non-varsity athletics.” Forcing students to constantly fight for the absolute bare minimum to sustain a team or club is unsustainable and disrespectful to teams that have actually made it past the first round of their respective playoffs and constitute the largest clubs on campus. With over 250 students across a variety of communities and sports, can we really afford to treat them as second-class members of our community? Consequently, I think there are a lot of issues to bring up, and it would be good to invite them to talk about the difficulties with club sports and varsity athletic dynamics. We should likewise bring in the captains and community members who have been adversely impacted, and at the absolute least, establish a clear standard for what rights are afforded to non-varsity athletics.
Ben Flig: Anyone else? If you think of anyone let us know.
Oliver: Someone related to wages would be nice.
Updates from Exec Board
Sarah: Any updates from the rest of Exec Board?
Victoria: In this upcoming newsletter, we’ll talk about it in Gen Bod too, we’ll be getting students’ input for the Facilities Fund.
Grant: I had a question about what you guys thought about the Constitution Committee. We could give it a rest if you want?
Ben Flig: I have some ideas about how we can change Students’ Council in the Constitution. It’s good to have the committee even as a standing committee because over time the constitution is constantly getting amended. In the past 20 years Students’ Council has been run in a lot of different ways, so having one committee for institutional memory would be great.
Oliver: Yes, one that can advise people whenever they’re trying to make a constitutional change, without making it unreadable.
Grant: I’ll talk to Oliver more, I was thinking it would be good to bring it back.
Oliver: If anyone has any big ideas about the Constitution we’ll hear about it maybe at the workshops.
Sarah: Co-Treasurers?
Sophia: We wrapped early budgeting.
*Thunderous Applause*
Sophia: We’ve had office hours to connect with clubs.
Caroline: Have people come?
Sophia: Yes, we’ve had about five. We’re also launching Squirrel Space. We have those features rolling out. Ben [PF] and I have gotten a chance to look around from an admin POV. We are getting a new ping pong table and foosball table for the D.C.
Ben Flig: Bing Bang Wallawalla Bing Bang! Woo hoo!
Victoria begrudgingly writes this down.
Caroline: Does this mean regular budgeting will be through squirrel space?
Sophia: Yes starting Monday.
Oliver: Is there a more recent update on the DC basement renovation timeline?
Sophia: Not other than that it should be open-ish next week. Student engagement will definitely be down there after fall break. It should be completely accessible by clubs next week.
Funding for Community Housing
Ben Flig: Can the Co-Treasurers enlighten us about funding community housing?
Sophia: Ben [PF] and I had a meeting with Amy Miller this week, and they shifted funds last year in Residential. The funding for community housing got terminated I believe.
Oliver: Yes, this happened a year before the summer. I think they initially tried to terminate it, but then set aside $100 per community house?
Sophia: I think that seems to be more accurate. But, they lost most of Student Life Office funding, and turned to the student activities fund, as a source. It’s my understanding they had 6,000 dollars last year.
Oliver: There’s affinity housing, which there are six of. PANA, LCC, BCC, QHouse, Nerd House, and I believe Cadbury.
Sophia: In our meeting Amy said, PANA, LCC, BCC, and QHouse as the four.
Oliver: Cadbury and Nerd House were lumped in and funded through StuCo. For the community housing it includes Lit House, Film House, and others just based on shared interest. That was last year, funded by RESLife but that was only $100 a year. LitHouse managed to get more money, but this was difficult. We had a meeting last year where we talked about this.
Ben Flig: Last November? [attached minutes from the November 1, 2024 Exec Board meeting]
Oliver: Yes.
Ben Flig: When I read those minutes, it was a little unclear about what the funding was for. Where does the money go for the different housing? Who has traditionally been paying for it? Who paid for it last year? And where does Students’ Council funding and Student Life Office funding come into this?
Oliver: Pre-COVID, all of it was Student Life.
Sophia: It’s a recent development that it’s StuCo funding. That was a decision made at a higher level beyond our scope. That’s not something we have control over. Anyways, there was a lot of upset last year since Amy’s predecessor said the money could be used for cleaning supplies. When Amy came in, her supervisors determined that was no longer feasible. The money solely became programmatic.
Ben Flig: Where do the houses get their cleaning supplies now?
Victoria: I’m a house leader, this year, we actually got a gift from Diamond. Some houses have left over supplies. But for the most part, we (students) are expected to pay for it. We get $1,000 to throw three events, and we are required to do so.
Caroline: It’s the same in PANA.
Oliver: Last year, the $1,000 explicitly couldn’t be used on house supplies. The stated logic is that students in the apartments have to buy their own supplies, so that puts community/affinity-house students at an advantage, if they were given that.
Sophia: The community houses and affinity houses are meant to get housekeeping attention, but sometimes it’s not considered a priority.
Sarah: While yes people in HCA are in charge of their own cleaning, the students in community houses have to throw events. There’s a bigger expectation for cleanliness if outside visitors are supposed to be coming in.
Sophia: Amy also raised that, at least for some houses, there’s a higher degree of representation of FGLI students so there’s a concern of inequity. Ben [PF] and I haven’t come to actionable conclusions yet.
Ben Flig: What are the community houses asking from us now?
Sophia: Not the houses so much as Amy on their behalf. We haven’t talked to House Leaders yet. We wanted to bring it up because we’re considering increasing the funding they get from us. Ben [PF] and I talked about increasing from $6,000 to $8,000 because of how constrained they were last year. There’s also been an increase in community housing, there’s now 11.
That money would be split within them. We talked to Amy about modifying the way they currently do budgeting. It’d be through StuCo now than through Student Life so we can allocate the budget via budget requests, like we do with other clubs
Sarah: I think it’s worth having a meeting to discuss this further since we can’t make conclusions now. These are really valid concerns that Amy is bringing up. It’s also necessary that Amy should meet with the House Leaders before we have a meeting again.
Ben Flig: I’d love for Amy and House Leaders to come to an Exec Board meeting.
Sophia: We wanted to say $2,000 as a starting point and reevaluate as we go.. We said we would also get a number back to her by next Friday. We can also just ask her to meet with us.
Sarah: I think just meeting would be great.
Victoria: Meeting with House Leaders might take a minute because we haven’t gotten hired into workday yet, so no House Leaders have been able to log hours yet for work they’re already doing so far.
Sophia: Even if it’s just a distinction for budgeting purposes, stating that we plan on setting money aside will be useful for us regarding allocating money.
Sarah: We should tentatively just set some money aside though.
Sophia: Agreed.
Oliver: This will probably be decided in a later meeting, but what is your thinking on making that money available for cleaning supplies?
Sophia: Ben [PF] and I talked about it, but I don’t know. Personally I would like to do that, and I think it would be useful, but in my view it’s RESE’s responsibility to do that from a principled standpoint. That’s because the Student Activities Fund is meant for Student Activities.
Sometimes we have to course correct when we think it’s a necessary expense. I want to talk more, but I’m not opposed.
Oliver: We run into that a lot. Fair.
Sarah: I adjourn this meeting at 5:04pm. Have a good weekend!
Some more fun from your Students’ Council Exec Board:
“I think therefore I am here” – Sophia Goss
“Route all email traffic through me personally “ Oliver Wilson
“I want to tack a photo of Jess Lord up above my bed so he’s the first thing I see in the morning” – Ben Fligelman
“For West is where we all plan to go some day.” – Robert Penn Warren
“I’m in a superposition” – Oliver Wilson
“Meow!” Sarah Weill-Jones
General Body Meeting 09/14
Sunday, September 14, 2025; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101
Members Present: Ben Fligelman, Sarah Weill-Jones, Oliver Wilson, Sophia Goss, Victoria Haber, Caroline Yao, Coco Liu, Isabela Azumatan Aceituno, Elena Vol, Anjali Agarwal, Jack Weinstein, Jackson Cannon, Vivian Ross, Conner McWhan, Abigail Trapp, Jonathan Lee, Zora Kuehne, Hettie Van Dyke, Leo Ni, Esme Dorsey, Ian Trask, Zoe Hartmann
Members Absent: Hannah Mattison, Grant DeVries, Ben Perez-Flesler, Isaac Kemokai, Ben Fitzgerald
Guests: Parker Brown, Ian Lihani
Next Meeting: Sunday, September 21; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101
“Stingray is a wonderful name for a child” – Ben Fligelman
- Call to order
- Roll Call
- Old Business:
- Students’ Council Retreat alternative
- Dates for Plenary workshops
- Did anyone figure out who brought Fizz to campus?
- Some positive things about fizz from Fords Form
- Should we talk to Res Life about a Fizz alternative?
- New Business 1: Plenary Planning
- Have everyone sign up for Plenary roles
- Assigning individual roles
- VCAM Collab and Student Art Group Collaboration
- Brainstorm communal art piece that could be made at plenary
- Create form for plenary theme with several themes
- Release in consensus to vote on theme? What do we think?
- New Business 2: Honor Code and Community
- People aren’t picking up their plates in the Dining Center!!
- CSCAR and involvement with Honor Code town hall series and form
- New Business 3: Capital Surplus & Facilities Fund
- Discussion on possible capital projects
- Adjournment
Ben Flig: I call this meeting to order at 2:05pm.
Sarah: Let’s roll call–state your name, positions, pronouns, and what aquatic animal you feel like today. My name is Sarah, co-pres, they/them. I’m a blobfish.
Leo: I’m a StuCo librarian, he/him, seal.
Ben exhibits signs of great delight – he loves pinnipeds!
Elena: I’m the junior class rep, she/her, hammerhead shark.
Esme: I’m a COML, she/her, otter.
Zora: I’m the Officer of Student Accessibility and Disability, any pronouns, lemon shark.
Ian Trask: I’m the librarian web manager, he/him, IKEA octopus named Bort.
Zoe: I’m the treasurer librarian she/her, shrimp.
Sophia: I’m a Co-Treasurer, she/they, box jellyfish.
Jackson: I’m on JSAAPP, he/him, dolphin.
Jack: I’m the Officer of Academics, he/him, manatee.
Isabela: I’m on JSAAPP, she/her, starfish.
Anjali: I’m the junior Board of Managers representative, she/her, anemone.
Jonathan: I’m the Officer of Multiculturalism, he/him, sea turtle.
Vivian: I’m the Officer of Campus/Student Life, she/her, penguin.
Michael: I’m the Honor Council Co-Chair, he/him, orca.
Coco: I’m the International Student Representative, she/her, porpoise.
Oliver: I’m a Co-Vice President, he/him, common octopus.
Parker: I’m a guest, she/her, octopus.
Hettie: I’m the junior Elections Coordinator, she/her, razorfish.
Conner: I’m the senior Elections Coordinator, he/him, otter.
Victoria: I’m a Co-Sec, she/her, jellyfish.
Caroline: I’m a Co-Sec, she/her, seahorse.
Ian L: I’m a guest, he/him, sponge.
Ben Flig: I’m the Co-President, he/him, (emphasis on big) koifish.
Abigail: I’m the senior class representative, she/her, stingray.
Ben Flig: Let’s start with old business. The StuCo retreat and an alternative.
Students’ Council Retreat Alternative
Ben Flig: Last week, we talked about having our traditional annual StuCo retreat (at least, it’s been a tradition for the past two years). We typically have it at Pendle Hill, but we won’t be able to go on an overnight retreat this year due to scheduling issues. Instead, we can have a series of dinners at Dean McKnight’s house where we have that same training/information presented, and also a possibility of a day trip.
Sarah: Linvilla Orchards, or something like that sounds good to me.
Ben Flig: Yes, while the dinners will be important, it’s worth having bonding time as a council. How many of you are interested in that?
Zora: Sounds great to me! We should have some level of Students’ Council bonding time, so we can get to know each other as people.
Ben Flig: We need to set the dates for the dinners with Dean McKnight, but we’ll keep you in the loop through slack.
Dates For Plenary Workshops
Sarah: Put these in your calendars. The workshop dates are Tuesday September 23rd, 6-7pm and October 7th, 6-7pm. Ben and I will be leading the Plenary workshops for students who are interested in writing a resolution.
We’ll get more into the roles that people are going to get on during plenary. We’ll need all of your help! Ben and I would be leading these but we wouldn’t mind if others wanted to sit in to observe and learn. Taking the lead is important for longevity.
Ben Flig: Additionally, we will release the plenary timeline on Monday or Tuesday. This includes these dates. It’ll be coming straight to your inbox right away! [Coming soon to an Inbox near you!]
Elena: Last week we talked about town halls in addition to those workshops. Have we figured out the dates for that yet?
Ben Flig: Those will be run and managed by CSCAR. Specifically this will be run by Sofie Quirk and Ben PF. CSCAR will have their first meeting on Wednesday, September 17th 4-5:30pm in Chase Auditorium/Chase 104, and a Drop In Discussion 6-7pm in DC Sunken Lounge. If you see the lovely 11 in. x 17 in. posters, those have the dates and locations on them.
Sarah: Each of the town halls will have different topics on what we will be discussing with the Honor Code. It’s really important for people to show up so we can discuss what the Honor Code should look like. Please come!
Did anyone figure out who brought Fizz to campus?
Ben Flig: For those who weren’t here last week, we had a discussion about Fizz. Did anyone figure out who brought Fizz to campus?
Zora: My guess is that Fizz the company created an Instagram account for Haverford students to follow and request a page for.
Ian Trask: I think Fizz might be created when a student requests Fizz Company to make one for their campus.
Ben Flig: I’m curious to know who it is so I can talk to that person (in a friendly manner) and have a productive conversation on that.
Sarah: If you’re reading the minutes, you’re not in trouble.
Ben Flig: If the Co-Secs wouldn’t mind, we also wanted to take a minute to read something from the Fords Form. Co-Secs?
Victoria: For those who don’t know, we have something called the Fords Form. Any and all students can write feedback to the Students’ Council here. This past week, we received some feedback regarding Fizz.
You asked about feedback on Fizz. Personally I do not use it, and I am not a fan of some of the stuff I’ve heard is said on there. HOWEVER, last week one of the members of a campus org I’m a part of advertised one of our events on Fizz and it nearly doubled past years’ attendance. For whatever reason that post reached people who never would have heard about our event through other channels. So that’s a plus side you may want to consider.
Sarah: I want to say that it’s important that people can ask questions they may be embarrassed asking with their names attached. If there was a way to have Fizz abide by the Honor Code, we would be fine with it, but we don’t think that’s possible. I think it’d be a good idea to have a middle ground so that we don’t ruin our paths of confrontation.
Parker: I wasn’t interested in it, but I did post about places to eat for example. Another positive is that the responses come in quickly. That’s a benefit for someone looking for dinner that night!
Zora: I’d like to add that people don’t ask where things happen in person, but people do want to know. No one wants the reputation of not knowing what’s going on on Saturday night, but wants to know what’s going on. Not that it’s not a huge, important thing, but that is one of the major benefits–that you can ask questions that aren’t strictly academic, and are fun.
Sarah: That makes sense especially if we’re trying to build community.
Ben Flig: Anything else?
Esme: There’s a Haverford Reddit also that might be a potential alternative. There are admins on it and there’s a lot of high schoolers who are asking questions, and also parents. I wonder if it’d be feasible.
Sarah: Yea it looks more informative and less inflammatory.
Ian Trask: With the Reddit community, you can set your own rules, as opposed to Fizz. The Fizz moderation guidelines which I’m looking at are extremely vague and are like “don’t commit crimes!” It appears that there are moderators, but it looks like they don’t do much or can’t remove posts directly. They have to vote in some sort of weird system to get a post removed if it’s against their vague user guidelines.
Ben Flig: One last point about Fizz is that the Fizz Corporation is making money off of Haverford students. We should have no illusions about their goal. It’s not to build community, they want to drive engagement and sell advertising. We should look at an alternative.
Plenary Planning
Sarah: In the Agenda and Slack, you will see that there is a link regarding plenary planning which includes roles and responsibilities. That is where we’ll be planning who does what regarding our production of plenary. Some people have already taken up roles, but if you’re wondering what roles there are, you can scroll down and read the descriptions. A point person will be mostly in charge with others helping with tasks. If you’re interested in advertising, you can see the responsibilities of what that entails for example there. Take a look at what you think you might be good at getting involved with, and in a couple of minutes we’ll decide what everyone is doing.
Oliver: For merch, traditionally the Officer of Arts leads that, but they have not been appointed yet. They should be involved at least for the creation. That will happen on Tuesday.
Sarah: This year, there will be two new roles. One will be geared toward the Officer of Arts in collaboration with the VCAM. Also another role will be for student group collaboration so we can have a club fair environment at plenary. If you have more questions about these roles, come talk to me.
Ben Flig: When you decide what role you want to help with just feel free to put your name down.
Abigail: What’s the Zoom role?
Ben Flig: There’s a hybrid option for those in the satellite rooms, usually the Officer of Access runs the Zoom.
Victoria: When we set up the Zoom for plenary, it’s not just starting a meeting the day of. Instead there were preparations before. The Zoom is set up in conference style, so that some people on Students’ Council have admin access, and can moderate the Zoom for plenary purposes. It takes a while to set up, so just be prepared. Not everyone will need to have admin access, mainly the Executive Board and the satellite room people.
Elena: I’m wondering if Zoom is available for students abroad.
Ben Flig: Currently students abroad are not technically a part of the Students’ Association. This is because they are not on campus, so they cannot vote. Think back to the Ceasefire Resolution [2023, read this Instagram post to learn more] in which students studying abroad couldn’t vote, so they were discarded. Ideally by spring we’ll have worked that out.
Conner: Will you extend this to Haverford students who don’t live on campus?
Ben Flig: Yes. I also want to talk about the VCAM collaboration.
Sarah: This will most likely fall under the Office of Arts. Ben and I will meet with VCAM on Monday to discuss a student art collaboration at plenary. I had the idea to put a huge art piece in the middle of the GIAC that students can be working on during plenary. We’ll be discussing what that could be. Does anyone have ideas?
Zora: VCAM has possession of a table loom and supplies that are adjacent to that. That might be interesting.
Sarah: Thanks. We could also put a big piece of paper out and do a huge drawing. Ben, do you want to talk about the plenary theme?
Ben Flig: Hopefully we can release a form of what Plenary themes the students might want, but what plenary theme ideas do we have?! We talked about a gone-fishing, Margaritaville, what else?
Caroline: A form will go in the Weekly Consensus and the Newsletter.
Conner: The Elections Coordinators are appreciative of the Co-Secretaries!
we love u conner – v and c
Ian L: Rainforest Cafe?
Zora: IKEA theme?
Victoria: Suddenly I want a cakepop themed plenary.
Zora: White girl autumn?
Dedicated Students’ Council Meeting Minute readers will remember that last year, former 2027 Class Rep Aaron Tokay proposed the exact same Plenary theme. What’s that old line. . . “first as a tragedy. . .then as a farce”? -Ben Flig
Coco: In the past, we talked about plenary themes not being culturally specific.
Oliver: Space?
Sophia: The customs theme last year was space, so maybe not.
Sarah: We’ll see what students say. So far we have: gone fishing, Margaritaville, Rainforest Cafe, IKEA, and… cakepop. Also: if people could just go over the delegation of roles spreadsheet, please sign up for something if you haven’t.
Honor Code in Community
Ben Flig: I got a text a couple days ago from a friend in the Dining Center. Apparently the Dining Center workers are upset because Haverford students haven’t been cleaning up their plates and trash. To me, this is remarkable, because we don’t even have to clean the plates, we just put them on the dish belt. Perhaps even more strikingly if you click on the link in the agenda, it’ll bring you to the Social Code which says:
“It is important, too, that we maintain respect for our shared spaces. It is our responsibility to clean up after ourselves in areas like the Dining Center and The Coop; to uphold respect by cleaning our own spaces and making the jobs of people working in Maintenance easier; and to respect others’ property and, in the event of damage to it, be honest with them.“
I find it concerning that we and our peers are not doing the bare minimum of looking after ourselves in community. Why do we think this might be?
Victoria: I was told from a friend that they overheard a student in the Dining Center say to another student when a mess was made that “that’s their job” when the students’ said we should take our plates over. Their job refers to the staff. When some students make spills in the Dining Center, they just walk away and leave it for the staff to handle. Generally, it’s because someone genuinely is messy or has never had to clean up after themselves growing up.
Esme: This is unrelated. This year for Customs in the dorms there’s been a new initiative to put info up about housekeeping in the halls. Maybe a similar thing would be helpful? She said the DC staff didn’t want that though, but students need to know that it’s not the staff’s job to clean up after you.
Zora: Some of those workers are other students. Not that we should value students over staff, but if you’re an individual not respecting the integrity of the workers, you’re also disrespecting your fellow Haverford students. We shouldn’t be disrespecting other students, staff, or faculty. That is technically an Honor Code violation. If students are having a problem putting their dishes away, staff can send out an email.
Ben Flig: I don’t know if an email is the right approach. My hope is that us on Students’ Council and you reading the minutes will confront a peer who is not putting dishes away. Ultimately it’s through small actions of community care that our principles and values are maintained. Our values and principles don’t mean a lot unless they are put into practice, and confrontation is part of the process.
Victoria: I actually think an email would be helpful if it came from the Co-Presidents. I don’t think Students’ Council has been as regarded in those smaller issues in the recent past years, and so you can reclaim that responsibility of community care as Co-Presidents.
Sarah: We should harp on the Code in that message.
Ian L: It’s a student thing, so it’s not like the Dining Center staff should be telling us to do this. It should be students talking to students.
Ben Flig: Any opinion from Honor Council?
Michael: I think that we can release a joint statement on that, especially if we touch on the values of the Social Code. Sofie and I would be happy to front that with you.
Ben Flig: A quick note on CSCAR and the Honor Code town hall series, our CSCAR Co-chairs have developed a feedback form.
Caroline: We will put it in the Students’ Council Newsletter.
Elena: What is this form asking?
Ben Flig: There’s a list of things. Basically it’s a way to get asynchronous digital input from students who might want to talk about the Code but don’t have time to come to a CSCAR meeting, or are not that invested but want to share their thoughts.
Sarah: We’re trying to emphasize that everyone should give input on the Code when we ratify it. We want to give students as many opportunities as possible. Please come to the town halls, the meetings, and fill out the form.
Ben Flig: Do we have anything else on that note?
Capital Surplus & Facilities Fund
Ben Flig: Sophia could you enlighten us on the capital surplus?
Sophia: I want to first clarify exactly what this fund is. This is money from the Students Activities Fund in prior years, the fund comes from the fee paid by individual students as part of tuition. It accumulated during COVID, because we weren’t spending it on activities, and also snowballed from money that was allocated in previous years but wasn’t spent by clubs. It’s grown to about $400,000. I want to note that Oliver and Jorja made a system to figure out how to move money around that was allocated but not spent, so this issue should be less prevalent than before.
Bryn Mawr had a comparable situation where they incorporated it into their expenses yearly, so they went through that money really fast, and ended up having a 40% cut recently in their activities. We want to avoid doing that, because that was detrimental to BMC’s community. Instead, we’re looking to spend that on capital expenses. For example, one big project and a few small ones.
Ben PF and I have talked about an amphitheater to function as a performance space or for town halls. This is already in the 2030 Strategic Plan so it’s something that we can foresee getting institutional support for. We also talked about a late night student run cafe, but we talked about other funding sources for that. Another big idea, coming from feedback from clubs on Squirrel Space, in what are your club’s needs that you haven’t been able to talk about or get funded, is dance practice spaces. We’ve heard that they’re really limited on campus, so getting more of those could be really beneficial. I also wanted to open up ideas to you all.
We just approved a foosball table and pingpong table, but that’s under $1000.
Zora: I want to put it out there since I heard this complaint. We have a semi-mobile wheelchair user, and she told me that a lot of the doors on campus are not accessible, because she doesn’t have the physical capacity to open it. We don’t have door buttons on all of the doors. That included the door to her actual dorm room, and later had to work with RESE.
Sarah: Not all of the buttons work either.
Oliver: I’m fully supportive of that, and I’m not opposed to using the surplus on that. However, that is the college’s legal obligation to be paying for that. There may be a better way to push Student Life or facilities to work on that.
Zora: In the same vein, our event spaces are not accessible. I’m recovering from a surgery and getting around campus is not easy. I’m a mobile person too, so it’d be helpful if repaving could happen.
Victoria: I think they’re already doing that.
Zora: Not all, but this can be reached out through facilities. I also thought that a mural idea would be nice.
Co-Secs look at each other happily because they also thought of this for the Facilities Fund…
Sophia: If that doesn’t end up working out, that is something we can address. We’ve all included accessibility thoughts and concerns for the spaces we mentioned.
Sarah: A student lounge space would be nice too, or study pods.
Ben Flig: Any more thoughts?
Elena: I heard last year and this year from people in the north dorms that there are no common rooms, so students feel like they can’t get to know each other as well. I wonder if we could do something to remedy that.
Zora: That is also true about Barclay.
Hettie: One third of Gum doesn’t have common rooms either.
Sarah: So just generally speaking, more places to hangout in the residential halls in especially first-year dorms.
Oliver: With all of the dorms, they did used to have common rooms but they were converted into housing because we needed more dorm space, because we over-enroll.
Sophia: The easiest way to address that would be what Sarah said, having a new space that isn’t in the dorm. The 2030 plan involves tearing down Gum, rebuilding certain things, etc. so it might not make sense to try to modify the dorms through this fund.
Sarah: I’d like to see more hammocks on campus.
Sophia: I’ve talked to Scott about this. There were issues with those being stolen. Some were broken which is fine, we have a warranty. But multiple sets have been getting stolen.
Oliver: Stolen to where…?
Ben Flig: If we knew where they stole them then…
Zora: Also I wish there were swing sets on campus that are not just meant for little kids, but for adults.
Sarah: Who here wants swings?
Majority raise hands
Ian L: What about makeshift swings?
Zora: Not sure if they’re safe or accessible.
Sarah: I do fear we have a Risk Management team.
Esme: When I was touring schools, Lafayette did an initiative where they put wooden swings on campus and the students liked that.
Sarah: Oh like swing benches.
Isabela: I live kind of far from central campus, and sometimes I have club soccer practice after class. It’d be cool if there was a space for us to put stuff, like lockers.
Esme: A mural would be a great art project at Plenary.
Zora: A mural on the outside of one of the building walls would be nice to memorialize Plenary.
Ben Flig: Last few comments?
Ian T: This is mural-adjacent. At my high school, my brother did one for his senior project so it’s possible.
Sophia: Because we are an Arboretum, we cannot put swings under trees. Sorry! Also, it’s Ben and I’s goals to also open this up to larger student commentary, because every student pays or paid into this fund. We want this to be open and available to all of you as opposed to staying in this room.
Sarah: Agreed.
Coco: We have been trying to get better spaces for an International Students Lounge, and we didn’t want it to be the basement of Apartment 22. There’s a lot of issues with having the lounge be in the basement; there’s mold and things being stolen, and things being cleaned out by facilities or Student Life occasionally. It’s not the most ideal situation. I think in the interest of having a space that’d serve the entire community, maybe something like Zubrow Commons or what MCC was intended to be, but the space doesn’t have to be limited to international students. People have been mentioning renovating the MCC, which could be a good project.
Sophia: We are super open to doing projects that apply to specific communities on campus; we overall want a well distributed picture for all students.
Ben Flig: I adjourn this meeting at 3:00pm.
This week’s list of “more fun from your Students’ Council” has been replaced by a large, flightless bird.
1 comment
I actually read the entire bi-college news with the Haverford student council meetings minutes…i have to say, this is a better way for an alum to connect with current students than the haverford newsletter. thanks for publishing.