Attendance: Emma, Thea, Oliver, Yehyun, Victoria, Kabir, Grant
Agenda: StuCo Exec Board Agenda 24/25
- Call to order (7:00-7:02)
- Roll Call (7:02-7:05)
- Adoption of Agenda (7:05-7:06)
- Approval of Minutes (7:06-7:07)
- Community Comments (7:07-7:17)
- Old Business (7:17-7:27)
- New Business 1 (7:27-7:42): Budgeting Appeals
- New Business 2 (7:42-7:57):
- Adjournment (7:57-8:00)
Call to Order
Victoria: I call this meeting to order at 7:05pm.
Emma: More than half of Exec board is in attendance. Quorum has been met.
Victoria: 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
Ford Form: Hello, I saw that you brought up a suggestion for a sensory-friendly room to be proposed for the facilities fund. I reached out to Yehyun inquiring about the response to this suggestion as the information about it included on the notes was quite limited and gave no indication on the response other than the fact that it was not chosen to be proposed to Facilities. I heard that the council members present “did not show a great interest/connection to the proposal.” I would like to vouch for the value and significance of this proposal to hopefully help the council members understand why the addition of a sensory room would be an invaluable and life-changing addition for many neurodivergent students on campus and hopefully motivate you to include it in your proposal to Facilities.
Although I was not the student who made the suggestion, nor do I know the student who made the suggestion, I was ecstatic to see the suggestion when I read the notes for the StuCo meeting where you discussed the Facilities Fund. For those who don’t know, a sensory room is “a controlled sensory-focused environment” that is meant to calm the nervous system and offer a reprieve from overstimulation. Many neurodivergent students on this campus, including me and many people I know, often retreat to our dorms after being around campus, because they’re one of the only few sensory-friendly spaces where we can rest and recuperate after the overwhelming overstimulation we are frequently subject to in classes, events, and various other spaces and everyday occurrences on campus. We’ve frequently spoken how incredible and life-changing it would be to have a space on campus specifically designated and designed to cater to our sensory needs and help us manage overstimulation. Overstimulation can contribute to the deterioration of our mental health and energy, which prevents us from fully dedicating our time to our academics and participating in social activities on campus. The addition of a sensory room would make it so we would have a safe space to go to help us recover quickly without having to go all the way back to our dorms (as some of us have dorms that are very far from the main campus buildings). Most importantly, it would mean that we wouldn’t have to feel like we cannot exist around Haverford with no safe spaces for us and isolate ourselves in our rooms just to recover.
As an example of its effectiveness, during the pre-customs Horizons program, we assembled a sensory room in the basement of the Dining Center, which neurodivergent students and students who were all around in need of a sensory break used all throughout its duration. We received a lot of positive feedback from this inclusion, and I even had a student personally tell me they wish it could stay year-round. So many students on this campus share so deeply in this sentiment. Recently, the Dining Center established a low-stimulus room that is available from 4pm to closing time for students who prefer a less sensory-overwhelming environment to eat at. However, as much as we have appreciated this new addition, a low-stimulus option for dining is not a replacement for the 24/7 sensory room that we really need. Not only does it have incredibly limited hours, but it ultimately is just a more sensory-friendly option for dining. Sensory rooms are specifically designed to soothe overstimulated neurodivergent people and to create a safe space for existing. When we have brought this request up to various offices and administrators, we’ve been frequently directed to various quiet rooms around campus. None of the rooms that have ever been suggested to us as replacements have appropriately met the sensory needs that neurodivergent students would need as proper relief from overstimulation. In fact, many of them have very blatant and overt accessibility or sensory concerns that would actively prevent them from doing so. Even the low-stimulus room in the Dining Center was quiet and unceremoniously mentioned in an announcement through the Haverford website. Every student I’ve told or asked about it has not heard about it and responded with shock and surprise at its existence. I hope that there are students learning about it right now either in the notes or through the person reading it out loud right now.
I believe that using the Facilities Fund to create a sensory room would be a perfect and once-again life-changing and invaluable addition to campus that would make a world of difference for many students. I have included a link to an article that I think wonderfully explains both why a sensory room is so important for neurodivergent students and how different universities have begun implementing them as for accessibility needs:
If possible, I would ask the student reading this to bring a printed copy of this article to pass around the room, but if there’s not enough notice to do so, I would simply appreciate it if the representatives present could look at it through the link in the notes.
To the student who made this suggestion, thank you for advocating for an addition to this campus that neurodivergent students around this campus have been asking for for years and desperately need. It genuinely gave me genuine happiness to see it on the notes, even if it was only in one line of the entire transcript. I would also like to thank the student who is reading this out loud right now and to all you council members present right now for listening to this very lengthy comment. I wish I could be there in person to advocate for the value of this suggestion myself, but unfortunately I am not a member of the Student Council. Still, I trust you as a representative of the student body to represent and advocate for the voice of neurodivergent students on this campus at this meeting.
Thank you for listening, and I hope you will consider presenting this proposal to Facilities.
Budgeting Appeals
Oliver: The appeals were submitted via email, the first one is from Korean Culture Club. They are asking IDEA about one of their events and wanted to appeal their study break event. They added a description that puts more of a focus on the food for their study break event. Unfortunately 2 out of their 3 events we directed to IDEA, just based on what they were asking for.
Victoria: Why was this rejected?
Oliver: We rejected all study break events.
Emma: We just rejected the food, not the event itself.
Oliver: For every study break, people wanted food or boba.
Victoria: We don’t do food requests?
Oliver: We don’t do food unless it is a cultural dinner or focused on food. Technically you can have a study break without food, and thus food is not essential for the event. Part of the logic is if we rejected all those events, that is a reasonable amount for IDEA to fund. Last year they were approved for this event because they called it the Korean Fried Chicken event, but this year it is called the Study Break event.
Thea: Do we have the money for this? And how much is this appeal asking for?
Oliver: We have the money.
Yehyun: For the appeals process, is the only option to reject or approve? Or can we ask them to reframe it?
Oliver: We can reject, send an email sending why, and then suggest how they can improve their request so it can get approved. Just so we keep a consistent policy.
Kabir: To clarify, the reason it was not accepted was because it was a study break event with Korean food and not a food based event?
Oliver: Essentially, yes. We are following the logic we decided in the extraordinary budgets committee.
Kabir: Last year, South Asian Society had a lassi and chai study break event.
Oliver: We rejected that equivalent this year.
Kabir: What about cultural events during exam weeks? I know normally we only approve de-stressers then.
Oliver: I think that is fine, like a weekly dinner isn’t really distracting from exams. The main thing we are saying is, in theory you can have a study break without food, and therefore it is not as essential as other food requests.
Emma: The purpose of the event isn’t to have food, the purpose is to have a study break with food.
Kabir: It’s semantics.
Oliver: The semantics help keep the policy a little more formal. We reject study breaks but encourage them to ask for funding from IDEA.
Victoria: It sounds like we don’t have a choice other than to reject and explain why.
Oliver: Yes, I can write an email tomorrow.
Yehyun: I move to reject this appeal.
Kabir: I second.
*appeal rejected unanimously*
Oliver: The second appeal is from Big Donkey Ultimate. This is just confirming that they will pay us back for the cost of the tournament. This is a self funded thing, so it’s outside of normal policy.
Victoria: This has been done historically?
Emma: Yes.
Kabir: In the budgeting guidelines, would you want to create a written policy on events that make money?
Oliver: Yes. We should have a meeting this semester to revise those.
Emma: I make a motion to approve this appeal.
Thea: I second this.
*appeal passes unanimously*
Victoria: I adjourn this meeting.
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