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 10/31
Friday, October 31, 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: N/A
Next Meeting: Friday, November 7; 4:15 – 5:15 p.m., – GEST 102
“YESSSSSSS!!!” – Sarah
- Call to order
- Roll Call
- Adoption of Agenda
- Fords Form
- Old Business: PLENARY
- COME TO PLENARY. GET YOUR FRIENDS TO COME TO PLENARY.
- Exec Board tabling signups
- Updates on advertisement, invitations, the Plenary packet, and more!
- New Business 1: Improvements to student life – re: money and spaces
- “Take a professor to dinner”
- Student space committee
- Student wishes cf. Sasaki 2030 plan
- New Business 2: Post-Plenary: Collections
- Who to contact & how to make it happen!
- New Business 3: Exec Board pregames Halloweekend!!
- Adjournment
Call to Order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 4:14pm.
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: We have no guests today, and there are no new Fords Forms.
Old Business: Plenary
Ben Flig: PLEASE COME TO PLENARY!!!!!!!!!! PLEAAAAAAAAAASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEAAAASE. I am Haverford’s Sabrina Carpenter. PLEEEEEEEEEEASE Come to Plenary!!!!! More seriously, Ian and I have been printing some cards. Thank you Ian Trask for your help on making advertisement cards for Plenary.
Sarah: The designs are adorable, and every student should get an invitation under their door to plenary!
Ben Flig: We’ll be dropping them off to Amy and MJ’s Office and the RCAs and RSLs will be distributing them.
Sarah: Anyone that can’t, we will help distribute them. You WILL be invited. All of the resolutions have reached the signatures they need, so the packet and slideshow will get put together over this weekend.
Ben Flig: That will go out on Monday morning.
Sarah: We’ll have physical and digital forms available. There will be a word search and crossword puzzle for your enjoyment!
Ben Flig: That’s all for Plenary.
New Business 1: Improvements to Student Life – Rolling Budgeting & Student Spaces
Ben Flig: We had some ideas on what we could use the Students’ Council Rolling Budget for. Something I’ve thought about is that it used to be the custom that professors would invite students to their houses. They’d serve food and such. It was a huge benefit for our campus community and built really lasting connections. When Haverford says that 40% of faculty live on campus, that used to mean something really important. Faculty and students used to have a much closer relationship, but that’s not the culture anymore. I had the idea that students can request in budgeting to take their professors and peers out for dinner. Ideally, this wouldn’t only be restricted to faculty: you could also take staff out to dinner! Sophia, what do you think?
Sophia: People can budget for that already. It’d be something we would have to figure out.
Sarah: Maybe there would be certain restaurants that could be pre-approved for that?
Sophia: Needing to approve a large number of reimbursements might be a potential issue with this. We’d check in with Student Engagement, but doing something like going out for dinner or funding a catered dinner event at a professor’s house might be more feasible in terms of how our systems run. We should have room in the budget depending on how many you’re thinking of and at what scale. Do you have an estimate of how many there would be?
Ben Flig: Not really. I’m thinking about Students’ Council events, it’s $15/person. I imagine it may cost more if we take someone to a restaurant, so that’s on my mind. I understand the idea of catering but there’s something special about going out. Catering is more work for faculty anyways. The reason they don’t host anymore is because they feel overwhelmed with their work. I think that taking professors out to dinner is easy — both for the student and the professor! Reimbursements might be possible, but I do understand the difficulty.
Sophia: It is possible, but logistically a little bit of a pain. It’s my understanding that the controller’s office will deny an entire reimbursement request if the tip is above 20%. I would want to check in and get back to you. One of our goals is to keep things equitable with clubs, but if we’re saying that you can take professors out and that is more than $15/person, it’s not necessarily fair to student groups that work really hard to follow policy and stay within that per-head limit
I understand where you’re coming from. I’ll need to check in about that with Ben and Student Engagement to see how they feel about an exception. We’ve already had clubs push back on that $15/person — that it feels too limiting — so if we make an exception I would want a really solid justification.
Ben Flig: My justification is that at a residential liberal arts college , one of the most — if not the most — important things is student to faculty relations. I do think it is justified as the basic mission of the institution.
Sophia: I’m not sure everyone would agree with that as a justification.
Tori: I don’t think it should come out of the Students’ Activities Fund though.
Sophia: We have a policy that money can’t be spent on things going to non-students, because it’s the SAF. So if you’re paying for a professor to eat that would be a violation of that policy.
Ben Flig: It seems like it’s splitting hairs.
Sophia: As an example, we had a club that wanted to host a social event with students and faculty and provide food for all attendees,and we pushed the faculty and staff food attendance cost to IDEA to stay consistent with policy.
Zoe: From a student perspective, if I’m putting $550 into SAF per year, I wouldn’t want that to go to non-student activities. I would want that to go to activities for and created by students. This should be a top-down funding opportunity from faculty as opposed to us funding it.
Sarah: I felt conflicted about this as well. On principle I don’t think we should cover it, but I am curious about institutionalization of such things. At BMC there are free tampon and pad dispensers. We have Students for Reproductive Health, but it concerns me that they have to allocate their funds to do that rather than the college.
Sophia: I’m meeting with Student Engagement and Reproductive Health to talk about institutionalizing some of that funding. I think there are concerns with how that might work, but there are more details to come. They’re not quite sure if it will fit in as institutional funding, but it’s definitely a conversation that started last year.
*Caroline and Victoria nod.*
Sarah: I’m okay with a tighter budget if it means people can access the items they need. Those items are really important and I feel like we’re so behind on that. Swarthmore has free menstrual products too. We’re the outlier. I’m glad there’s an initiative.
Ben Flig: Moving on, given our discussion last General Body Meeting, about the Sasaki Plan, I was thinking about, because it’s so unusual, we should have a Students’ Council Committee created to look at some of those plans. We can get Cities Majors who are interested in that to help us. This wouldn’t be a shared governance committee so we wouldn’t need approval. I’m curious what you guys think.
Tori: Last year, I was on the Implementation Committee on the 2030 plan, and it was really difficult to be in that role, because they only wanted either of the two of the Co-Presidents. One of the aspects that comes with that is property stuff. It was harder to be in that role as a student who isn’t involved in city planning or have expertise in that area for example. My scope was more in financial aid and sports. Maybe if we had a committee internal to Students’ Council to talk and discuss and then report to one of the Co-Presidents.
Sarah: I think you’re right. Ben is definitely invested in this and I’m also more invested in financial aid and budgeting. My concern is that if we make a new committee then we might have to divulge private information to students that is not ready for the public right now.
Oliver: I’m not that involved super closely, but the creation of a formal committee and going through Appointments Committee, might make administration more aware of that interest and it might help them with getting on board with the idea, in the context that they would not share information. It’s about how we frame it and go about it.
Zoe: I think it might be helpful too. Those plans are super overwhelming, so it might be nice to have a group of students demystifying these documents anyways. I don’t know how many people know what’s going on.
Sarah: Some Cities Majors would be helpful. Students who have an academic understanding of what’s being talked about. I can look at a plan and say it’s cool, but I don’t have the necessary nuance to understand.
I just want to make sure that the Sasaki 2030 plan, and I’d love some input, is accessible. There are historical building laws that if it’s old enough you don’t need certain features, but if you renovate, you need accessibility features. I really want to gauge what buildings want to be renovated and some might require new accessible accommodations.
New Business 2: Collections & Post-Plenary Community Building
Ben Flig: We talked about this last Exec Board Meeting, but per the FELC Report, something new this year is to have a ‘Community Hour’. There was not a lot of huge support and interest. I think more support could be given towards “Collections.”
Collections was a fifth day meeting. On Thursday morning, all of the students and faculty would have to go to the Haverford Friends Meeting House and take part in a Quaker meeting. Making undergrads do anything on a Thursday morning is hard, and the student body did not like this very much. In the 1960s students asked the president to end the practice he and the president obliged back then to remove the requirement for mandatory meeting attendance
The proto/ur-common hour was the blank space in the academic schedule on Thursday mornings left behind by Fifth Day Meeting. That was only done away with in the 1990s, when they switched to Bionic and the new class schedules.
I was thinking, especially after Plenary this semester, there should be a space where all students and all faculty and all staff can come together once a week and discuss. I know the difficulty is buy-in—people don’t like to show up to things. I think it’d be good for the community though, and it can serve the role of what President Raymond is thinking for in a Community Hour; but this can happen whether or not we alter the schedule.
Sarah: Where would this be? I think cozy would be good like VCAM. VCAM is very communal and underutilized.
Ben Flig: My concern is that it may not be big enough.
Sarah: Do you think that it will have a large enough turn out where it exceeds VCAM space?
Ben Flig: That’s my goal! The space needs to be a place where the only thing to do is hear people’s voices.
Caroline: We don’t have enough of those spaces on campus. Any larger would be like an auditorium but it’s not very cozy-vibes or exactly what you’re looking for.
Ben Flig: If you set up Founders Great Hall as a communal space, it could work. When you put people in a space, it becomes welcoming.
Sarah: If there’s enough seating in Founders Great Hall then it could be sufficient. I wish we had more community spaces in general.
Ben Flig: I have some ideas of who to talk to. Jim Krippner? Emma Lapsansky-Werner? Lori Pineiro Sinitzky? Who else?
Tori: We’re meeting with Don this upcoming week, so if he isn’t in favor of the facilities ideas students brought forward, we could also talk about more communal spaces.
Sarah: To harp on that… I understand why Student Life moved to the DC Basement but there are concerns about there being less space for students. There’s not as much space for them to eat and for them to move around and hangout. I wonder if there’s any way we can add more furniture or tables for students. There’s also less couches.
Sophia: We’re working on that! We’ll be building furniture at Plenary, some of which will go to the DC Basement!
Sarah: I adjourn this meeting at 4:52pm.
General Body Meeting 11/2
Sunday, November 2, 2025; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101
Members Present: Ben Fligelman, Sarah Weill-Jones, Oliver Wilson, Grant DeVries, Ben Perez-Flesler, Victoria Haber, 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, Jackson Cannon, Hettie Van Dyke, Sofie Quirk, Ben Fitzgerald, Esme Dorsey, Zoe Hartmann, Pratyusha Katiyar, Hannah Mattison, Eliana Kim,
Members Absent: Sophia Goss, Isaac Kemokai
Guests: Ian Lihani
Next Meeting: PLENARY on November 9 at 2:00pm – GIAC; Sunday, November 16; 2:00 – 3:00 p.m., – GEST 101
You MUST be going to Plenary!
- Call to order
- Roll Call
- Ford’s Form
- Old (and only) Business: Preparing For Plenary
- Run through everyone’s roles
- Call times
- How it’s going to run
- TABLING!! +getting that Quorum of 942.
- Rules of Order and other Plenary packet matters
- Questions about resolutions?
- New Business:
- AAEC Meeting Brief Report
- Anything else
- Adjournment
Call to Order
Sarah: I call this meeting to order at 2:04pm. Welcome everyone!
Roll Call
Victoria: Guests please say your name for the minutes.
Ian L: My name is Ian. I am the Honor Council freshman representative.
Old Business
Sarah: We’re talking about Plenary! We gave everyone some roles in our usual spreadsheet. Please navigate to that. It’s in the agenda.
Ben Flig: Most of you are going to be here at a very specific time, 11am. If you’re coordinating with BLAST or physical logistics we want you there earlier. Please be on time in the GIAC so we can be ready for the 1pm doors opening. For guests, your role is to be at Plenary!
Ben PF: We need a new role for two students to fill. We’re buying furniture from IKEA and we need assemblers as a demonstration of constructing something symbolically.
Sarah: We’ll see if we have people to share. The furniture will go in the DC basement after for students to use. This includes couches and chairs.
Ben Flig: Back to the spreadsheet. I want to run through what we’re all doing. The merch team will be at the merch table. What’s the traditional number of stickers students can have?
Julie: As of spring 2025, the sticker number went from 1 to 2 stickers per person! Every student gets one shirt per person. Regarding the merch table, we had signs for shirt sizes which was helpful. Can we get that again?
Sarah: Yes of course. Next, our COMLs will be our line greeters. Since we couldn’t have boba this year, we’ll have a snack station paired with a packet station. You guys will give them a snack and a packet as they go inside.
Ben Flig: We have a lot of snacks so don’t worry about that. It matters more that people have a packet.
Sarah: Yes. There will be many opportunities to get snacks.
Ben Flig: Our quorum counters include Chris and Vivian. We’ll be using the shared counter app. On the day of Plenary, I’ll make a link and share it. Our satellite room people will be able to set everything up through the zoom. Keep track of questions and votes!
Sarah: You’ll also take some merch and snacks for students there to have.
Ben Flig: Moving on. Quorum by zoom, Sarah can you talk about that?
Sarah: Leo and Zoe are running that. There will be a document for electronic voting made by the elections coordinators. Otherwise voting will be different this year with help from SECs. You guys will make sure it’s accessible. You’ll also count quorum. One of you will be the plus and and the other will be the minus. You will convey quorum to Elections Coordinators, and also be making sure to organize the pro and con debates, and Q&A.
Zoe: Who will read out those messages?
Ben Flig: We will be. Next, mic attendance. This will be done differently. We’ll have one standing mic or people to line up behind, and if someone has difficulty getting to the standing mic, we will have only one mic runner to get to that person.
Sarah: Next, contact with Blast. Zoe, you’ll be there at the earlier call times. You need to make sure that everything is set up with BLAST. If BLAST needs something you’ll be the point-person. If anything happens to Jack or Ben, you’ll need to step in as well.
Ben Flig: That also covers music. Now snacks. Because we have so many snacks we’ll have two tables. We’ll have one at the opening and one inside the GIAC.
Elena: I have a question about snacks. Where will snacks be placed this year for Plenary?
Ben Flig: Ideally the snacks will be inside of the GIAC. We’ll move the outside ones inside.
Ben PF: We can do that when we hit quorum.
Ben Flig: We’re very thankful for our Co-Treasurers, and also for people handing out snacks.
Oliver: Will we be distributing snacks to the satellite rooms?
Sarah: Yes, those in the satellite rooms will take those before Plenary starts.
Victoria: Will anyone be going through the slideshow?
Sarah: That’s great to mention, Jonathan can you do that?
Jonathan: I can.
Ben Flig: Traditionally, the COMLs sit at the main table, but this year that will be a little difficult as support is needed somewhere else. Our VPs will be taking time and staying on the ball with quorum.
Sarah: We will be strict with time this year.
Ben Flig: Our Co-Secretaries will write the minutes and the script with their awesome ethernet cables.
Victoria: Will we need adapters?
Jack: We have adapters!
Sarah: Jack, and Vivian, you guys will be studying abroad, so we just want to make sure whoever is in this role next year for Spring Plenary knows what to do.
Ben Flig: Truth, righteousness, and wonders!
Sarah: Thanks Abby for your help with Bounce too! Make sure Zoe has music and that Bounce arrives on time. Let us know if there are any issues. Anjali is our contact person for clubs or whatever else that’s not related to what’s been put in the Q&A.
Ben Flig: And if you have any questions about how Plenary is running, send an email to Anjali!
Sarah: That’s a run down of Plenary. We will also be having a meeting after this for Elections and voting at Plenary. We’re doing elections differently this year and hopefully will be smoother and quicker. Similarly we want to avoid Google Forms. Alright, we went through the roles. Yay! Does everyone know your call times?
Everyone nods.
Ben Flig: Day of set up or BLAST, please arrive at 10am. For how it’s going to run, does anyone have any questions?
Oliver: The only resolutions we have are the Honor Code right?
Ben Flig: Yes, there’s the enabling clause and then the honor code resolutions, ratification of the code and the alcohol policy.
Victoria: So that’s eight agenda items.
Sarah: Yup.
Zora: Pratushya and I are not necessarily on physical logistics, but we do have set up things to do, when should we be there then?
Sarah: 10am.
Ben Flig: It will be a wonderful Plenary! Moving on to tabling. Ideally we can get as many people in these tabling slots as possible. We want as many people to tell people to go to Plenary as possible. Because this is the highest quorum ever, getting 942 people will be a heavy lift!
Sarah: We can absolutely do it though.
Ben Flig: Please sign up! I’ll try to be there basically every night at dinner. Expect to see me there in the DC yelling at people to go to Plenary. Ideally even if we don’t have the tables completely reserved, we can still stand out there and tell people to show up.
Sarah: We have tabling reservations for dinner, but you probably can table easily during breakfast or lunch. I already see people signing up, thank you so much.
Zora: Would you like someone to bring down posters and put them into the cubbies? I can do that.
Sarah: That’d be great, thank you so much! Also… rumor has it there might be a crossword puzzle at the back of the packet. Now we’ll move onto the Rules of Order. We have been hard at work with your 2025 Fall Plenary Packet.
Ben Flig: It’ll be done very soon! Here’s the current draft. As you might be able to tell, this is a longer Plenary. That’s a lot of Plenary.
Sarah: We’ll be avoiding a lot of deadtime by using this mic structure. We want to get things done as quickly as possible. We’re trying to get from A to B to C to D. It might look a little daunting but it’ll only go faster if you all show up.
Victoria: Did you guys shorten the times for anything?
Ben Flig: Only for public comment. Because public comment doesn’t need to be too long.
Oliver: Because it’s 1.5 minutes per speaker, does this mean we’re doing 3 pros and 3 cons?
Ben Flig: Yes, ideally we’ll take six speakers, whether it’s pros or cons.
Oliver: But how are we selecting the speakers? Because for some of these, more than six speakers will go up.
Ben Flig: Yes, pretty much. Otherwise it’d be who the mic runners pick. We think it’ll be easier to have people line up.
Zora: This is a similar thought. How are we gonna balance people walking up and people in satellite rooms and on Zoom? Because it seems to be that doing a ‘getting there first’ system, that won’t be fair or equitable.
Sarah: That’s a good point. We’ll have a limit either way on sections. If we need to extend any section, we’ll vote on it too.
Victoria: I remember over the summer, there being mention about town halls about these resolutions, is that still happening? What about if people have amendments to these Honor Code resolutions. Does CSCAR have any plan for that?
Ben PF: If people have questions, so far we’ve been mentioning for people to email us, and also we’ve had open meetings since our committee formation, as well as a couple of town halls.
Sofie: We’ve been in the Sunken Lounge of the DC, so we would hope that if anyone had anything pressing, they could have a way, either online or in-person, to contact us.
Victoria: That’ll still happen this week?
Ben PF: Yup.
Sarah: We’ll be cognisant of Zora’s point.
Ben Flig: That’s everything for Plenary right now! You’ll get more messages about it as the week progresses.
Sarah: Before we get to our other agenda item, how is everyone feeling?
Ben PF: Great!
Conner: Could you go over again, the policy for the Q&A Section? How did you decide for people to go up to mics for Q&A?
Ben Flig: There’s less deadtime where a runner has to go find the person back and forth between people.
Sarah: It reduces a lot of movement. It’s also difficult since people can get missed or the runner might just go to whoever is closer.
Oliver: Will we still be voting on extensions for the pro-con debate?
Sarah: Yes, it’ll be informal.
New Business: AAEC Brief Report
Caroline: This weekend, the AAEC met for their semesterly meeting. I report that it went very well and there was a lot of engagement. It was great to see around 15-20 alumni here, discussing campaigning, endowment funds, and how to continue supporting the alumni and sharing what their concerns are. They also want to hear from students. From our student liaison side, JJ has been a student rep for a while, and she talked about the affinity group, GCC. JJ has been wanting to do something new this year to not just give a general overview but do more focus group meetings on bringing news and concerns from club or student org groups to AAEC, so that was great. Holly Vincent, who is on field hockey as a captain, is a new member this year. She talked about One Team Rally and other campaigns and programming that the IA and Office of Alumni and Constituent Engagement planned this year to help with athletic funding. She spoke very highly about that impact. They also asked about the Honor Code. I filled them in with updates on Students’ Council and Honor Council. They reported they’ll be having an alumni discussion session in January after its implementation about the Code Rewrite. CSCAR Co-Heads await news about that. If anyone has questions just let me know. It was cool to be there as a student. We heard from Jim Kinsella and Kim Spang which was very informative. Joy Takahashi was also there to represent The Corporation of Haverford.
Victoria: Can you explain what the committee is?
Caroline: Oh sorry. It’s the Alumni Association Executive Committee. They provide leadership for alumni affairs. Similar to the student association, there’s the alumni association. The Executive Committee takes charge of providing a bridge between alumni to the college to develop programming for current students and the corporation. They also nominate alumni members to the Board of Managers and more.
Ben Flig: Great! With that, please please sign up for tabling. Sofie, if possible can you share this with the Honor Council?
Sofie: Sure yes.
Ben Flig: Thanks!
New Business: Misc.
Chris: I sent an email to all varsity coaches. Most of those coaches forwarded it to the athletes as the words of Danielle Lynch will be at Plenary. She’ll address all student athletes in an additional email that they must be there.
Hettie: If you are going abroad in the spring and resigning from your position, please email us and let us know as soon as you can, if you haven’t already.
Ben Flig: Please raise your hand.
Zora: This is an add-on. Would you like us to send a message to Customs people to tell their kids to go to Plenary?
Julie: Later today, all Customs people will be receiving an email from the Customs Committee on this, with information and guidelines/support on how to get their whole hall to Plenary.
Sarah: Okay, there’s a lot we talked about. Thanks everyone for being here today, Let us know if you have any questions. If you’re involved with quorum or elections please stay here for our upcoming prep meeting with Hettie and Conner. I adjourn this meeting at 2:45pm.
