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.
General Body Meeting 10/27
Sunday, October 26, 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, Caroline Yao, Coco Liu, Elena Vol, Jack Weinstein, Isabela Azumatan Aceituno, Vivian Ross, Conner McWhan, Anjali Agarwal, Jonathan Lee, Zora Kuehne, Julie Edelstein, Ian Trask, Chris O’Conner, Abigail Trapp, Leo Ni
Members Absent: Victoria Haber, Jackson Cannon, Hettie Van Dyke, Michael Pyo, Sofie Quirk, Ben Fitzgerald, Isaac Kemokai, Esme Dorsey, Zoe Hartmann, Pratyusha Katiyar, Hannah Mattison
Guests: Ian Lihani
Next Meeting: Sunday, November 2; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101
Are you party host trained? You should complete the training!
- Call to order
- Roll Call
- Ford’s Form
- Old Business:
- Plenary Planning updates
- Individual member reports
- Talk about what you’ve been doing and where you’re going from here!
- GIAC food situation — re: pizza and boba not allowed
- Choose day-of plenary roles: Plenary Spreadsheet
- Your last chance to choose roles before they get chosen for you!
- New Business 1: Draft Honor Code Discussion
- New Business 2: Affinity Group Coalition (AGC) Meeting De-Brief
- New Business 3: Board of Managers De-Brief
- Property Committee debrief
- Student Affairs Committee debrief
- New Business 4: 2030 Plan Open Session Topic Recommendations?
- Adjournment
IMPORTANT: Party host training for StuCo will be happening after the meeting. It’s vital that Students’ Council members remain for and participate in this training — it sets an example for the community and teaches highly useful information.
Call to Order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 2:08pm. The Fords Form submissions are in the co-secretaries’ inbox, but they are not here yet. We’ll go around and do roll call and plenary updates.
Old Business
Sophia and Ben PF: We are in charge of budgeting for Plenary, so on the topic of snacks, we went back and forth with the Athletics Department via email and had conversations with Danielle and others. The answer that came out of our communications is that they are concerned about the mess that has been left in previous years from both pizza and boba, so we have had to find alternatives this semester. We’re now working on a solution that is providing a large variety of snacks instead (there will be enough for everyone to have as much as they want), and working with Athletics and Facilities to find a common ground. There was a possibility or idea of holding it in the Alumni Field House, but we had concerns about the logistics there as well. Additionally we didn’t get a clear answer on the food policy for the Field House either, and it’s not feasible to switch locations in less than two weeks. We also met with Terrence Townsend who recommended we budget to hire a member of housekeeping staff for the duration of the event to ensure the space stays as clean as possible. We’re now just working on the process of ordering items, snacks, etc.
Anjali: I was at the Board of Managers this weekend. We’ll talk more about that later in the agenda.
Conner: Hettie and I are planning to meet with IITS regarding smoother voting for Plenary, and also we are planning for the next round of elections.
Coco: As the International Student Representative, I followed up with Jesse Lytle about the implementation of the plenary resolution from last year. Sarah and I are meeting with Natasha and Sophie from ISSO next week to discuss ways for Students’ Council to better support international students.
Abigail: I talked to Jodi about setting up Senior Week and I met with Haverritmo and Bounce, and we’ll only have Bounce performing due to some miscommunications.
Julie: All shirts and stickers are 100% ready. I’ve also been working with the Compendium to make a Zine for plenary. The Arboretum Fall Fest is still looking for performers, which is at 4pm on Thursday, and also I started meeting with people from Hurford Center for projects throughout the year.
Jonathan: In regards to plenary, I’m a part of Physical Logistics, and I’ve emailed IITS about ethernet cables and temporary access for increased WiFi before break; Jack and Vivian can talk more. As Officer of Multiculturalism, I held the first AGC Meeting this past Friday.
Vivian: I’ve mostly been talking to BLAST about plenary-readiness, past leadership, and what needs to happen. I have sent out an email for applications for Co-Heads for Haverfest and for the Lutton Fund, which should be approved soon. We’ve also been planning various events for SECS.
Isabela: I have no updates since fall break.
Zora: For plenary, the Zoom link has been finished and set up. There was a form that was sent to Co-Treasurers for students to sign up if they need the Zoom link for plenary. I’m on the advertising team with Ian, and posters and promotion are in the works. I met with Dean McKnight on Thursday to talk about accessibility with the Facilities Fund; I’ll also talk with Scott. We are planning on getting a student accessibility training mandatory for students and all club events.
Jack: For plenary, I’m on the Physical Logistics, we’ve just been sending out a lot of confirmations about all the little details. I just need to collect the physical materials and Vivian and I will send out further details and instructions to you all as we know better how to be setting up things. Regarding my role as Officer of Academics, I’m sitting in on various committees with faculty, I’m still working on how to condense that information for you all.
Ian Trask: For plenary, I put up a lot of posters this past week, about 100. I updated the homepage of the StuCo website as well.
Chris: A couple of weeks ago I met with Danielle, on how she’s going to be sending an email to all the coaches to send to all athletes. There might be a couple of games on plenary for fall sports, but we should hope for a larger athletics attendance.
Ian Lihani: I’m a guest, he/him, class of 2029.
Leo: I don’t have plenary updates. But I’ve been working through the library archives for StuCo.
Elena: For plenary, I’m doing most day-of stuff. I’ve also signed up for tabling in the DC to tell students to go to plenary.
Grant: We had DAC, discussed current issues on access to food during break, quality of food, and we are continuing to discuss pushing back DC hours so that the COOP can have later hours. We are hoping to extend those hours to 10pm or even 12am. Regarding the athletics plenary resolution, we met with a lot of folks, and we decided that a plenary resolution won’t be necessary anymore.
Oliver: The Student Employment Task Force has its first meeting tomorrow.
Ben Flig: Butting in to say, hey, tabling for plenary at DC. Do that! Sign Up!
Coco: For snacks, if athletics is concerned with trash, how will we deal with trash from snacks?
Sarah: We’ll be cleaning all of that.
Sophia: We’ll also be hiring staff this year.
Sarah: Any updates on the Facilities Fund?
Caroline: For the Facilities Fund, we haven’t met with Don yet, but we have sent out an email and are continuing to work on communication for that. We’ll hopefully have a follow-up soon.
New Business 1: Draft Honor Code Discussion
Sarah: Let’s talk about the new Honor Code. What do we think?
Ian Trask: The formatting is really confusing. Why is there no Section 2?
Ben PF: We fixed that. There is a Section 2 on another document.
Sarah: It’s okay if you haven’t read it yet, it’s midterms, but please raise your hand if you have read it.
Elena: I think it’s great. My suggestion was that confrontation be moved up.
Chris: I thought the document felt more elastic compared to the past Codes, and applicable.
Zora: It is a lot easier to read and parse through. And broken up into sections that make a lot of sense to me. It’s easier to follow.
Ben PF: We’ve added Section 5 and talks about consensus and procedures.
Oliver: Currently consensus seems to be missing.
Ben PF: We haven’t sent out an updated version yet.
Grant: Why is the section on AI so short?
Ben PF: We can’t be that specific because faculty have a ton of differing views on it and it’s not completely in our jurisdiction.
Chris: I’ve been talking to Wendy about AI in the last Wawa With Wendy, she’s strongly against outright saying complete no to AI, and she encourages usage as a learning tool.
Ian Lihani: I know it was talked about in CSCAR.
Caroline: This year, I know that Michael, as one of the Honor Council Co-Chairs, has a goal to talk with faculty about a newer or improved AI Policy to be in the Honor Code, so if you have any questions, I think that Michael might be a good source for that.
Ben PF: We want to encourage students to think critically about their usage and if it’s in line with the Honor Code.
New Business 2: Affinity Group Coalition (AGC) Meeting De-Brief
Sarah: Next we’ll move on to AGC.
Ben Flig: I appreciate Jonathan for adding that to the agenda. Anyone can add to the agenda, you’re all invited to.
Jonathan: Yea, we have representation from ALAS, LCC, COCO, MRSU, MENA, and SAS. Alina and Caroline are the other co-heads. The first thing I’d like to talk about is support from StuCo. It’s helpful for them to be at StuCo Meetings when the meeting agenda does regard affinity groups. At the same time, they also understand that if they were to come to other/all sessions related to affinity groups, that would also make my role null, so they acknowledged that point and said that they trust how I will represent AGC.
We’re working on building an affinity group calendar, Victoria’s idea, to know when other affinity groups are holding events and to work around that. If everyone collectively promotes that, we’ll hopefully have increased attendance. Then, others brought up some concerns around budgeting this fall. They brought up the food policy about not having raw meat and eggs, especially because it disproportionately affects affinity groups in getting non-DC catering. One group leader mentioned that having to say that they needed “cultural significance” for requesting food in budgeting and that creates some frustration. I think maybe we need to discuss that aspect on explaining cultural significance and the possible burden that also places on the Co-Treasurers on determining that.
Sophia: We’re totally with them on the new raw food policy. We have a meeting set up with Dean McKnight this week to try to get a solution worked out with that issue. It’s currently that you functionally can’t prepare any food with college funds. For instance with that particular event, that was in early budgeting and we don’t approve snacks in general in early budgeting because we don’t have a good sense of what budget requests are going to look like in regular budgeting, and generally want to be more conservative earlier on so we ensure we can balance the budget later.. And that was more on strategy for funding not cultural specificity.
Jonathan: Okay thank you, I’ll relay that.
Sophia: We’re also always open to having people come to talk to us about their concerns in office hours!
Zora: Is it that they want to come to all StuCo meetings, or just especially when affinity groups were discussed?
Jonathan: They are aware that they can come. But more just a distinction between when it is or is not necessary for them to be there if I am already representing them.
New Business 3: Board of Managers De-Brief
Ben Flig: Let’s talk about the Board of Managers. Most of their discussion has been on the capital campaign that they released. Board of Managers meetings are typically confidential. This information isn’t. I’ll talk more about that Comprehensive Campus plan. Anjali and I visited the Property Committee. Don Campbell mainly updated them on dorm renovations. We also attended the Student Affairs Committee. The Board of Managers in that committee have differing views on the Honor Code. The Board of Managers is a complicated group!
Sarah: I went to the DEI Committee. We heard from the experiences from ISSO and the Chesick Scholars Office. I’m really looking forward to talking with Coco and Natasha on what international students are dealing with right now. I’m only giving publicly known info. But we can talk about the 2030 plan.
Ben Flig: Before that, I want to talk to Jesse Lytle about more details of what we are and are not allowed to say. Let’s talk about the 2030 open sessions.
New Business 4: 2030 Plan Open Session Topic Recommendations?
Anjali: I didn’t attend the ones in the spring but the Implementation of the 2030 Comprehensive Campus Plan Committee held 6 open sessions for the campus and heard from the general public. People could ask about anything on a given topic like the Kim Institute for Ethical Leadership. I reached out to Charlotte, one of the co-heads, we didn’t have any plans to host community sessions, we can look into hosting some more late this semester and earlier next semester. I wanted to know if anyone has questions and if so to direct them to me so I can compile those.
Zora: In a meeting with Dean McKnight, I was wondering if there is a way that students can have access to what those plans are?
Anjali: The plans themself are actually available in website form. But to your point I actually would want them to send out a reminder about the information and to update their progress on the plans.
Ian Trask: The comprehensive campus plan is really strange.
Ben Flig: The comprehensive campus plan was designed by Sasaki Associates. It was made to plan the future of our campus. They laid out these large maps of campus, and green and red stickers. Apparently this is what passes for community engagement these days…kinda crazy. I can send out the Sasaki campus plan, I personally don’t think they have. The truth is that the Sasaki plan is mainly a fundraising plan.
Ian Lihani: How much change do you see from the forms and emails StuCo sends out? Like after the DC email for example.
Ben Flig: I talked to Dining Center staff about this and plates are still being left out. I think the next solution might be to just write reminders on each table, like a small card.
Ben PF: I think what makes the Honor Code unique is that it’s not only a concern about ourselves but a concern for others. So things like if you see a person not putting away.
Sarah: Next Thursday is our second Students’ Council retreat dinner series. We hope to see ya’ll there. I adjourn this meeting at 2:58pm.
Executive Budgeting Committee Meeting 10/23
Thursday, October 23, 2025; 4:00 – 5:00 p.m., – GEST 102
Members Present: Ben Fligelman, Sarah Weill-Jones, Oliver Wilson, Grant DeVries, Ben Perez-Flesler, Sophia Goss, Victoria Haber, Caroline Yao
Members Absent: N/A
Guests: N/A
Next Meeting: Friday, October 31; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102
“What are you thinking Sophia?” – Ben Flig “Nothing.” – Sophia
- Call to order
- Roll Call
- Adoption of Agenda
- Fords Form
- Old Business:
- Fall break wrapup!
- New Business 1: Plenary discussion
- No pizza, no boba, what now?
- Voting logistics
- Plenary roles
- Plenary advertising
- New Business 2: Haverford Community Hour/Collections
- New Business 3: Draft Honor Code Discussion
- New Business 4: Board of Managers Pre-Brief
- Adjournment
Call to Order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 4:06pm.
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.
Fords Form
Victoria: Since our last meeting, we’ve had multiple Fords Form submissions. They are as follows:
“pls don’t get rid of boba, pizza will just cause more issues for people with dietary restrictions. also let’s not give up support on a small business like??”
“I saw in the meeting minutes that you’re trying to remove boba from plenary. Personally, I think most current students at this point associate plenary with getting boba, shirts, and stickers, so taking any of those away would feel to many of us like removing an iconic tradition and I feel like it would lead people to lose trust in stuco. I know you’re trying to push new traditions, like the rubber duck day, so I know you do care about Haverford having traditions and you also care about uniting the student body. Personally the reactions I’ve heard to rubber duck day range from “it doesn’t make sense to randomly celebrate start of fall with rubber ducks” to “it’s a waste of money and bad for the environment, stuco should be spending money on more important things.” Similarly, when I mentioned the lack of boba at plenary to some of my friends, they were all sad the tradition would be going away, since they were really looking forward to it. All of this is to say you can’t impose onto people what they love or don’t love, and since you polled us about plenary theme, I thought you’d care what the people think about other aspects of plenary as well. Bringing up things like what used to be done 5-6 years ago doesn’t make much sense here, since those people graduated a long time ago and aren’t reflective of the current students body. As a senior who experienced both plenary food trucks and plenary boba, I can tell you most people I know hated the food trucks and love the boba. I understand the concern re people going to plenary for all the wrong reasons, but I don’t think that taking away boba will fix that in any way. At the end of the day we as a student body have issues regarding how we interact with the honor code and with each other, and the way to fix that is to engage in dialogue with one another and look into what larger issues are prompting students to behave in the ways they do, rather than taking away boba at plenary.”
“can we have boba instead of pizza for plenary please? thank you:)”
“I really love the idea of the syrups!! I love the lingonberry drink and I’m psyched to have it without having to drive to Ikea :)”
“I’m DYING (actually DYING) for there to be Swedish drink syrups at plenary. I think it would be the most wonderful and whimsical and delightful activity. It would add a bit of intrigue and nuance to an otherwise somewhat repetitive event, and leaning into a theme never hurt anyone. I’d feel my heart expand if I got to plenary and there was a table of Swedish drinks syrups there. I’d shriek. I’d jump for joy. I’d sing. I’d dance. I would NEVER break quorum if there were Swedish drinks syrups at plenary.”
“In the minutes last week it was shared that a new tradition is being introduced in November involving rubber ducks. While I appreciate the efforts of the council to find develop events to bring the community together, I have a few concerns about the practicality of this event and whether students will actually be engaged. First, is it the best use of our budget to buy rubber ducks when funding could go towards improvements or redirected towards existing student experiences on campus (ex. club budgets, plenary, etc.)? This would be an annual expense, especially if the goal is for students to keep the ducks (which they may or may not do). Second, what is the environmental impact of buying enough rubber ducks for the student body? We already have one tradition on campus which involves a large purchase of non-renewable materials that are not reusable yearly (Pinwheel Day). Thirdly, while Pinwheel Day is a wonderful tradition, are the rubber ducks distinct enough and engaging enough to justify creating a separate tradition around them? It is also important to consider that Pinwheel Day is a campus-wide tradition that was started by students organically – which is part of its charm. The event itself has little to do with pinwheels, but rather the existing campus community and our mutual decision to engage with it. Lastly, should we be prescribing tradition to students, especially one which doesn’t have any clear roots or pattern for student engagement authentically? Instead of creating brand new traditions, I think highlighting any existing campus practices and amplifying them would be a better avenue for community building if that is the goal of the ducks. This can be seen in Pinwheel Day, Major Declaration Day, and different departmental traditions which were started by students.”
“It would be great if we could renovate the Union Crypt! There’s so much potential with the space down there, but it’s all musty and dusty right now and not so fun. I see an old Bi-Co News article that says, “Currently, the college is seeking ideas for future use [of Union] from across campus.” What came of those ideas?”
“When is the DC Basement going to reopen? I had heard that the ping-pong table would be reopened last week, and it is still closed, and the table is still unopened downstairs. It doesn’t really seem like any sort of work is going on with the basement, so I would appreciate knowing what the timeline for any action is.”
“I’m glad that you’re keeping sizes up to 3X for plenary t-shirts. Those of us who need it definitely appreciate it.”
Victoria: To quickly address, the DC Basement officially opened this week! An announcement was sent in the Weekly Consensus.
Sarah: We’ll be addressing the food shortly. Due to plenary, it may not be feasible for us to have Rubber Ducky Day.
Oliver: It seems more like a spring event, so maybe that will be better anyways.
Old Business: Fall break wrap up
Ben Flig: We had our Students’ Council general meeting during break virtually. We talked about plenary planning. We’ll talk more about that shortly, but to start, the situation is that we cannot have messy foods in the GIAC.
Grant: The club sports resolution is something I’d like to talk about. We met with Jodi, Scott, and Tyler. Since that was going to be an outcome of the resolution anyways, we think we might not go ahead with it. Tyler and others in ResLife seem to want to make a document to address these concerns with captains and coaches. So, since we can hopefully get this without going to plenary, we just won’t bring the resolution. We’ll be meeting on November 13th. I’ll invite the Officer of Athletics.
Victoria: Facilities Fund was submitted to Don earlier in the week as well, we’re waiting for a response.
Sarah: We talked about some voting alternatives as well for plenary. There was a possibility about an in person polling station using paper voting. There was also talk about having four tablets in a centralized location to have people vote. We’ll elaborate more.
Oliver: That’s in the case we can’t do informal voting?
Sarah: Yes.
Grant: I’m in favor of this so that we can have exact counts.
New Business 1: Plenary discussion
Sophia: We met with Terrence Townsland, he runs housekeeping. We chatted with him and emailed back and forth with athletics. We got a hard no on having pizza, boba, or any other kind of catered food in the GIAC due to concerns over messes and what the cleanup has looked like in previous years. Terrence reached out to meet with us. We had a productive conversation with him. He’s great!
Ben PF: He said that housekeeping would be open to working with us for future plenaries but for this one it is beyond our control.
Sophia: We chatted about what it might look like to have Plenary in the field house and if food policies would be different. We couldn’t come to a definitive answer but it was overall a great conversation since they clearly wanted to work with us. More concretely, he recommended that we have housekeeping staff present at Plenary to help with changing trashcans. We’d pay them hourly and can definitely work into the budget. It would make the cleanup situation much better for athletics and we can continue paying our employees here. We will have 3,000 dollars worth of snacks though, so you are all getting fed! We promise!
Ben Flig: How are those snacks going to get to Haverford?
Ben PF: They will be delivered. For any IKEA snacks we’ll have to get those in person.
Ben Flig: Great. Let’s talk about voting. I have a vision for this. Along the bleachers, I imagine there will be boxes. Every student will have a yes, no, or abstain.
Grant: We’ll have to redistribute the papers.
Ben Flig: This won’t be an issue since everyone will have a physical Plenary packet.
Victoria: Make sure you guys check in with the Elections Coordinators and confirm in the Rules of Order that it will reflect this change.
Sarah: Regarding roles, we will make sure everyone on Students’ Council has a role this Sunday.
Ben Flig: Now regarding advertising. An idea I had was having the RCAs put invitations under the door of all of the first years. Ian made this really cute invitational graphic.
Everyone is praising Ian. We are so happy to have him!!!!
Sarah: We’ve chatted with ResLife to make sure they get distributed.
Victoria: Are there plans for this with RSLs?
Ben Flig: I had the idea of giving these to every student. I was hesitant to suggest this to not overburden them.
Sarah: I think if we have the means then we should.
New Business 2: Haverford Community Hour/Collections
Sarah: Wendy has told Ben and I that Haverford wants to implement a community hour. We’ll be meeting with Jack Weinstein, our Officer of Academics, to get more insight on this from him and the Academic Affairs Committee. At the last Wawa With Wendy students submitted times they thought would be best.
Ben Flig: Yes. Community hour could be at any given time. There’s a lot of discussion about whether or not faculty or athletics would like this, since it may impose on their work. I think this is a tough lift, so we have to think about it more. I’m curious about your thoughts.
Victoria: I’m not sure that it will be a space that I would be motivated to go to during my busy day to be with the broader community. I work that into my schedule in other ways.
Sarah: She said it could also be a space for scheduling meetings.
Oliver: I don’t know if she has a particular time of day of the week in mind, but there’s no free hour that everyone has in their schedules. I think it will be hard to push things around.
Grant: If you try any day other than Friday, then scheduling is difficult due to athletics and classes that are Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday.
Sarah: Right, and students are in labs.
Ben Flig: We might also consider “collections.” Similar to how Haverford used to (and similar to how Swarthmore does it now), this would be a space held once a week during a time where many people are available, where students, faculty staff and administrators can be in community with each other. It would address Wendy’s goal while being flexible.
Oliver: I think it’s logistically better.
Sarah: Yes, it’ll help with coordination.
Oliver: Where would this happen?
Ben Flig: Founder’s Great Hall. It’s classic. Swarthmore does it at their Quaker meeting house, but we cannot do that since it’s farther off our campus.
Victoria: I’d like for this to also have a central focus, since it may not be nuanced enough if the only reason we are doing this is “to hold community.” There are a lot of smaller spaces for different communities that do that already.
New Business 3: Draft Honor Code Discussion
Ben Flig: Ben, can you elaborate on behalf of CSCAR updates about the new Honor Code?
Ben PF: There’s a draft of the Honor Code. We did it. It took a long time. There have been a lot of people involved. It’s still a draft that we’re still improving. It’ll be finalized on Sunday. So when the minutes come out, the final draft that will be presented at plenary will come out. We’re going through a series of checks to make sure it’ll get approved by the administration. We’ll collect signatures soon.
Sarah: We appreciate all of the work CSCAR has been doing. You’ve put in so much work.
New Business 4: Board of Managers Pre-Brief
Ben Flig: The Board of Managers meeting is this weekend.
Sarah: We’ll chat about what we’ve been doing as a Council, CSCAR and the Honor Code, we also want to have personal conversations with the Board about some different topics.
Ben Flig: I think a lot of the Managers have two images of Haverford in their head. One being the image when they were there, and the other being the image they get online and brief current interactions. My hope is that we can broaden their perspective.
Sarah: I want to remind them why they love Haverford so much. Despite all of the scrutiny and negativity we’ve faced, there’s a lot of great things that have been too. I don’t want to lose sight of that.
Adjournment
Sarah: Are there any additional things to address?
Ben PF: Do we know what’s going on with mics?
Sarah: We’ll confirm that.
Ben PF: I know there’s always one standing mic but I think we wanted to get more this year, for pros and cons, and such, so there is less empty space between comments and people can go one right after another.
Ben Flig: Why would we have multiple mics instead of one?
Sarah: We’ll ask Jack how it’s been going and pivot from there. Is there anything else? I adjourn this meeting at 4:46pm.
