“We want to be a GPS assistant for students rather than the drivers. So we can tell you, ‘Hey, I think it would be great to take a left here.’ But if they choose to take a right, then we’ll recalculate from there,” is Haverford’s Student Council Co-Presidents Yehyun Song and Victoria Haber’s motto for this academic year. Song and Haber sat down with The Bi-College News to talk about their new objectives and goals this year.
In an email sent to students, Student Council highlighted some of their goals for the semester, including tackling food insecurity, enhancing resources for reproductive health and improving communication. On how they came to identify these areas for improvement, Haber stated “Yehyun and I were both Chesick students here at Haverford. That just has a lot of connotations for us in terms of accessing resources. Food security has always been a major component of my life personally, and I think it’s also something you [Yehyun] have to deal with as a Korean-American student. We have so many peers who are also affected by food insecurity, so that was really something we wanted to help better facilitate the process of making”. Mentioning Haverford’s student run food pantry, The Nest, Haber continued “The Nest helps facilitate an easier process to get support from the administration, as the student council gives most of its funding to the Nest. The funding that we do give is not necessarily sustainable in the sense that it’s not enough for the number of bodies that they cater to.”
Haber also expanded on her experience with reproductive health and how it is an initiative on campus that she has previously been involved in. She noted “I was a part of Students for Reproductive Health. It’s all about making reproductive needs accessible to all students. I was specifically a part of the box-filling subcommittee. Every dorm and office on campus have these boxes that are consistently filled by students in order to help make tampons, pads, condoms, lube, etc. accessible for students. And it’s sort of a similar situation…with the hardships my peers and I experienced getting these resources easily distributed. That was sort of something that made me really interested in like, okay, how can we also help better facilitate the transition of certain responsibilities into possibly being institutionalized?”
Haber and Song highlighted that they don’t want these goals to only be attributed to them. “We just sort of want to use our position as a means of uplifting the student leaders that are really pioneering those conversations.” Song further expands on the student council’s goals to improve communication. He specifically wants to be a “bridge” between students and administration.
“We want to be a GPS assistant for students rather than the drivers. So we can tell you, ‘Hey, I think it would be great to take a left here.’ But if they choose to take a right, then we’ll recalculate from there.”
– Haverford Students’ Council Co-Presidents 2024-5
“We realize that the student council has the incredible privilege of being that bridge. We wanted to make sure that the intimidating image of the student council and student government doesn’t prevent students who need help or would like to bring up a potential change. We are here, we’re open, and we want it to be it to be postured in a proactive way. So there are times when students may not have the time, energy, resources, or support to come through that bridge, meaning going to admin. So how can we meet them halfway or all the way? We’re also trying to focus on using our Instagram, recognizing there’s so much going on in a regular student life,” he told the Bi-Co News.
Song explains how the three focuses have larger themes. The first one is that “we are students and the work the student council does relies on student labor. A lot of the things that we are doing in this are things that the school should be taking more accountability for. There are elements of it where it should be student-led. But when it comes to food, like hunger and reproductive health, it shouldn’t be another student paying for another student. It should be the school providing these fundamental resources to become a productive student.”
The second theme is re-establishing a Haverford identity. He asks, “what does it mean to be a Student Council President? It means to serve the whole student body. But to do that, we have to understand that we need to bring people into the Haverford community. A lot of these things are, in a way, physical things that you can see progress being made. That can show you like, oh my gosh, student council works! And I feel like that brings a sense of solidarity.” Haber adds to this, “We want to restore an identity that was already there. Haverford has just sort of seen a lot of disengagement. We had splenary I think, two springs ago and we constantly have to ask for students to engage in elections. Of course, there’s been a lot of turmoil going on in the world around us that has had a major impact on our student body.”
Haber and Song also discussed that throughout this semester, they have added a new goal, “we are incredibly interested in budget and financial transparency here at Haverford. We want to better facilitate processes to which students can engage in budgeting processes or at least understand what those processes look like. We’ve been in contact with the Vice President for Finance and Administration, Nico Washington, so students can be a part of conversations surrounding budgeting and finances here at Haverford.”
Funding and support for The Nest has been a topic of debate and contention at Haverford, especially last semester. The Bi-Co News asked the two co-presidents about their efforts to get in touch with the administration in order to get more funding for The Nest. Haber stated “It’s tough in the sense that we don’t want to be the people driving the initiatives, right? We don’t want to go to admin and say, ‘All right, here’s the breakdown of the plan, let’s talk about it.’ Those aren’t conversations we’re able to have. We have been taking the time to have conversations with the nest co-heads themselves to better understand how we can better support them.”
Sund added “every semester, the Nest receives $30,000 from the student council. They receive a total of $60,000 for the whole year. What that looks like is only $1,500 every week to spend on food. So, that’s really only four dollars per student per day — that’s really tough. That’s almost the same as one fruit cup at our local Coup. How can we say that we are addressing food hunger when we can only provide a fruit cup for a student a day? We recognize that funding the Nest received from the student council is not sufficient…The challenge is that we have a limited budget … so it’s hard to have these types of conversations with the admin … you mention tension, but I wouldn’t say there’s direct tension and contention with the administration. I think it’s more of how can we address this issue in a way that is delivered in quality and that is delivered consciously.”
Haber finalised, “ We’re having conversations with so many people. There are so many stakeholders. It’s a really hard balance between thinking about long-term solutions and then day-to-day operations. We had to reckon with thinking about how can we take care of Haverford right now, while also catering to a Haverford that’s not here yet.”
This year, Haverford announced their new Meeting the Moment initiative. On their potential involvement with this campaign, the Co-Presidents explained that they did not have direct communication with Meeting the Moment as it started in the Summer, and their campaign started at the beginning of the fall semester.”
“It’s important that we have a space at Haverford to have discussions that may be difficult. But it’s really important that we make sure everybody has an equal voice. But for us as student council, we’re focused on serving our students … In those tense moments, or even in times of insight and wisdom, how can we continue to support our students?” Yehyun stated.
The Co-Presidents explain programs like Meeting the Moment, where third-party groups come to Haverford, are extremely important for discussion. They are using their position to implement a “shared government structure, where students can have more of a say on what kind of third parties they want to invite. So for the spring semester, we’re hoping that shared governance will be in place so that student voices will be more integral in the process of what kind of third-party groups are coming to campus.”
Plenary at Haverford is scheduled to take place on Nov. 10. Student Council uploaded a timeline to their instagram page and spoke about the upcoming event with the Bi-Co News.
Haber mentions that she is “feeling good” about it and is excited. “We’ve been very intentional with how we’ve been planning it. We’ve split our council into several different subcommittees to facilitate merch, logistics, accessibility, budgeting, etc. and it’s been a smooth process so far. We’re excited after fall break to start ramping up how much we’re advertising it and thinking more of the ways we can engage our student body and increase quorum.”
She also describes how she and Song have been navigating around the 2024 election. “We wanted to be mindful of that, especially in having plenary after that date, have our packet released after that date, just so that students will be able to climb that stress of thinking about student council needs.”
Song told the Bi-Co News, “It has been incredibly smooth. I just wanted to give an incredible heartwarming shout-out to our council members. They are on top of it and we are extremely appreciative of their hard work and commitment. But, we’re all students first and they understand that plenary is an important part of Haverford … The election is important. A lot of people’s eyes are on it — not only their eyes — but their hearts race as it gets closer to that date. We want to respect and acknowledge that. We are here to support students. So that’s why we were very intentional. Even though November 10 seems late into the semester for plenary, but that is the time we’re living in! We’ve been in contact with the IDA office. We’re in close communication to make sure that leading up to the election and plenary, we’re taking care of our students’ mental health to the best of our ability.”
Haber highlights that their goal of being proactive “don’t mean anything unless we’re reaching out to students or students feel comfortable coming to us.” She wants students to know that they have a “form in our newsletter that they can submit” to bring up issues and ideas they want to talk about at plenary. “We strongly encourage students to please submit to that, even if they just have small ideas…we want to hear them!”
The Student-Council Co-Presidents want students to know that they are there for them. “Again, we’re GPS systems, the more accurate the address is—when it comes to what you need, what you want, and how you wanna get there, the better we can serve students. So we really encourage students to use those channels … But at the end of the day, we have our hearts and our minds on the well-being of our students.”
