By Charlie Lynn and Ethan Lyne
It was a late night—and an early morning—that few Haverford students will ever forget. For over eight hours, hundreds of Fords came together for a marathon Special Plenary filled with passionate and emotional debates over important resolutions to transform the Honor Code and the Students’ Constitution.
Haverford’s Special Plenary began with an earlier-than-expected quorum of 75 percent of the student body about 30 minutes after the doors opened at 5 p.m. The first orders of business were proposals to change the rules of order for Special Plenary, ending with the creation of a greater allotment of time for discussion during the ratification of the Honor Code.
The first two resolutions of the night, one to ensure that Plenary is scheduled around both religious and cultural holidays, and one that re-centered the process of confrontation on the self-healing of the harmed party, passed with without much contention.
It was the third resolution of the evening, which sought to transform the Social Code, that generated some of the evening’s most contentious debate. For nearly an hour and a half, the conversation concerning this resolution revolved around two proposed changes to the Social Code: the adoption of new language around political ideology and the addition of a paragraph that explicitly states that “disrespect against staff members and student workers are in violation of the Honor Code.”
The language of the Social Code shifted from considering political beliefs a target for discrimination to urging individuals to not allow their politics to become a source of discrimination toward others.
Discussions on free speech and on whether one’s political ideology requires the same protection against discrimination as someone’s race, gender, or national origin dominated the debate. Students who were concerned that their political ideologies were being discriminated against faced off against students who questioned whether that experience was comparable to that of being part of a marginalized community on campus.
A small yet vocal group of students spoke at length about their, or their friends’, fears that they faced exclusion on campus due to their conservative/libertarian beliefs and that these changes would make this worse. Other students found problematic the idea of equating discrimination against people of color and members of the LGBTQ community with discrimination against people’s political ideology.
The other significant change to the Social Code about respecting staff and student workers was largely supported, but a proposed amendment to make this clause more open-ended was brought forward, generating conversation about the differing intentions. The proposed amendment failed to pass, but the third resolution was eventually approved.
The fourth resolution, to change the Academic Code, passed without much debate or opposition. This resolution echoed some of the changes made to the Social Code. The fifth resolution to increase quorum to 66% at future plenaries also passed with surprising ease in just under a half-hour.
The sixth resolution to create a Day of Community Reflection on MLK Day at the start of the spring semester failed to pass in second vote after close to 45 minutes of questions and discussion. One of the biggest concerns raised was that it would limit international students’ time at home over winter break.
After this resolution, the five-hour mark of holding Quorum had passed, resulting in a need to extend the time for another hour to deal with ratification of the Honor Code and the last two resolutions. With the reading of the entire Honor Code by Honor Council Co-Chairs and an honest and frank discussion about the passage of this new Honor Code, it was ratified with only ten votes in opposition—just before the clock struck midnight.
Quorum was quickly lost after the ratification of the Honor Code. This sparked an outpouring of anger from students who expressed the importance of seventh resolution, a values statement advocating for gender neutral bathrooms throughout campus. They claimed that students were already going against the spirit of the Code that they had just passed. This impassioned call was heard by the remaining students, who spent the next hour reaching out across all forums to bring the nearly 200 students required to restore quorum back to the GIAC to pass this seventh resolution.
With the remarkable restoration of quorum near 1 a.m., the final two resolutions were heard as many students were entering their eighth hour of being in the GIAC. The seventh resolution passed, and the eighth resolution to expand the options for the college president beyond a yes or no answer to passed resolutions was also passed, although by a small majority. Special Plenary ended at 1:40 a.m, ending what was the longest plenary in memory, according to Honor Council Librarian Riley Wheaton ‘20.
