Attendance: Yehyun, Victoria, Emma, Thea, Oliver, Grant, Jesse, Kabir
Agenda: StuCo Exec Board Agenda 24/25
- Call to order (1:00-1:02)
- Roll Call (1:02-1:05)
- Adoption of Agenda (1:05-1:06)
- Approval of Minutes (1:06-1:07)
- Community Comments (1:07-1:17)
- New Business 1 (1:27-1:57): Jesse Lytle and Sayeeda Rashid
- Discussing the idea of creating a shared-governance body for inviting 3rd party speakers to campus.
- Old Business (1:17-1:27)
- Affinity Housing – connecting with Scott Wijciechowski
- Adjournment (1:57-2:00)
Call to Order
Yehyun: I call this meeting to order at 1:05pm.
Thea: More than half of Exec board is in attendance. Quorum has been met.
Yehyun: I move to adopt the agenda. I also move to approve the minutes. Any concerns? The agenda is adopted and the minutes are approved.
Thea: There is no community comment.
New Business 1
Victoria: To introduce, the goal of this meeting is to clarify more about Meeting the Moment for the student body and talk about the initiatives surrounding shared governance for the curriculum.
Yehyun: Could you first give an explanation of what Meeting the Moment is.
Jesse: Meeting the Moment is a container for a wide array of programs. Senior staff and IDEA and a bunch of collaborators were all thinking about how we are going to approach this whole academic year given the conflict there was the year before. Leaning into our mission and culture, what kind of dialogues and information sharing and modalities of being together around a cluster of issues. The Israel/Hamas war, as well as the election this year are weighty topics for our community. We wanted to create spaces for the community to productively confront those topics and work through not just the disagreement, but how we disagree and if we disagree. Meeting the Moment was an attempt to put a framework in place to find lots of different ways to engage with the community. Unfortunately, because it was summer, we did not have access to our students. We wanted to just put in place a beginning slate of things as well as a structure for people to propose things. The programs you have seen so far, a range of programs about antisemitism from groups that didn’t necessarily agree with each other, things about the election, dinner with 12 strangers, hoping that it would inspire other ideas among the faculty, staff and students. We would put funding so people can make their own events happen. We planned out the beginning part of the year, we still have a trickle of programs coming out but we do not have much planned for the spring. We want to support the community that is showing interest, including from faculty, staff and students. There is still somethings, dinner with 12 strangers, the series. We are hoping to invite others to be at the table.
Yehyun: To clarify, Meeting the Moment is not a response to the lawsuit that the college has.
Jesse: No, the lawsuit was one symptom of everything that was going on last year. That is its own thing. This is not a requirement, this is just us leaning into what we think Haverford should do.
Victoria: We are curious what the committee looks like, who “we” is.
Jesse: It has been a coalition of the willing, There is not a hard boundary around it. It’s a group of people who have had different levels of interest. It has been quite permeable as different people got engaged. People come for their programs. The core is IDEA, Sayeeda originally was anchoring the team. They took a break and will be back before too long. The IDEA team has been the conveners, not the planners per se. That includes Nikki and Kai and Raquel. We have had Ben Lee from the Provost Office, Eric Hartman CPGC, me, the communications team, that’s been the core, Dean McKnight, student life folks. We meet every Friday, 11-12 on zoom. You never know who will show up. “We” is a swirling group.
Grant: In terms of the events themselves, have you received a lot of students showing up? And what kinds of students have been showing up, do they tend to support the side of whoever is presenting or is there a wider array of viewpoints?
Jesse: That’s a good question. The events have all been different. Student turnout has been modest. Haverford is small, so 5-7 people showing up is pretty good. More often, this is a generalization and based on assumptions, there is more often agreement than disagreement, and disagreement takes the form of what happened with the ADL protest, disagreement is outside the room. I wouldn’t say it’s been a home run in terms of getting people in the same space talking about hard things at the moment. That is not necessarily the purpose to convene those moments on the spot. It is more so to plot out the idea that there are legitimate forms of disagreement and the community should be able to hold events for all types of viewpoints. I don’t know what happens after the events. We are hoping the reality leads to more chance interactions. When I was in college I wasn’t having these discussions in seminars, but in the hallway in the dorm at night. By seeding the conversations we hope it is in the ways students can pursue on their own time in their own ways.
Yehyun: We were looking at the proposal section, Could you clarify what does the committee look for when students are submitting proposals. How planned out do they have to be, what are the expectations?
Jesse: We want to make things happen. We will be looking for a way to get to yes. We don’t want to turn away good proposals. If it is incomplete or not fully thought out, we would work with the students to make it work. We want to get people talking and be together in the community.
Yehyun: When will the Spring curriculum planning start?
Jesse: It’s starting now, but not in ink. “We” were talking about where we want to take things. The election is over, the war continues, what is on people’s minds. Artificial intelligence has been something we are hearing about a lot on campus. Maybe that would be something people want to talk about. We definitely want to hear from students about where we want to take this. Thinking generally about our meta goal of getting people talking.
Yehyun: How do you think student input can best help in these planning spaces?
Jesse: At least two ways, one is submission of proposals for events. The other would be at the thematic planning level. We would love to have students occasionally or regularly be at the table with this planning group. We are starting to feel like we don’t want to be speculating about what students want to see. We want to have co-creation with the community.
Yehyun: So we have it officialized, when we talked in our check-ins, you were open to any number of students that can put in their voices, is that still the case?
Jesse: For sure.
Victoria: I have been thinking if having a formal shared governance structure is the most effective? If it is open to everyone, is there a point to appointing students. We would see regular students, but we could still be fostering an environment where you don’t have to be on the committee to attend.
Jesse: We haven’t been publicizing it, we wanted to defer to you guys. There are lots of ways we can do it. Have an open zoom link or we could have a designated group of students or a mix. We want to have you guide us.
Kabir: Because a lot of these discussions are more so open discussion, we could have a form of open committee where anyone can join. We would have to meet with them and train them about the form of the committee before they join. We could have like two people from StuCo that are in charge of communicating with people that want to join.
Jesse: Sure.
Victoria: I like that.
Kabir: Meeting the Moment is clearly an initiative from the college to create space where differences can be thought about. Compared to last year, there was a lot of tension and disagreement. Is Meeting the Moment meant to foster agreement?
Jesse: No. the issues we are dealing with are intractable. I don’t imagine unanimity coming out of it. In the scope of Haverfords mission, it was hard as we were talking past each other. Modes of expressing differences were questioned, what are modes of protest. How we go about it. In the best of times that is the right thing to be dealing with on a college campus. This is a moment with social media post covid where a lot of people missed high school. There was a lot of development that was missed along the way. So do we need to spend extra time together figuring this out as a community.
Yehyun: How do we invite third parties? I want to pull up a hypothetical. Let’s say a third party submits a proposal with faculty or a student or staff. So they go through the proposal and part of it is bringing a third party group. If we have students involved that share discomfort in inviting a certain third party group onto campus, how do you navigate those discomforts? In the ad hoc committee we have discussed how the last thing we want to do is silence voices. Also how to navigate people discomfort or hurts and make sure people aren’t put in harmful spaces.
Jesse: That is such a good question. That is what the ad hoc committee is working on in lots of ways. Foundationally, the bar is really high to say some set of people’s ideas or speech is not tolerable on our campus. This set of ideas, things we don’t even want to hear is a high bar. Hate speech, clearly threatening and violent speech. Those are the lines where we can say we can’t have that. Short of that, being uncomfortable or offended is something that colleges are loath to regulate. That’s what this initiative is all about. I don’t have a great answer to that. Part of it is having well conceived programs where controversial ideas can surface, and then be responded to and engaged.
Yehyun: I was thinking about the results of the elections. If we have a MAGA group who wants to come talk about political differences. Just seeing the campus post-election, a majority of students may not welcome that. This is all hypothetical. How would we deal with something like that?
Jesse: If it’s unpopular political speech, there is nothing at Haverford college prevents unpopular speech. You don’t have to go, you don’t have to listen, you can go as some form of opposition, or you can go and engage. Those are all legitimate responses. The classic ACLU story, the way they defended the neo-nazis in America, super offensive, and yet in my view, we need to make ourselves strong enough as a community to engage with unpopular ideas.
Kabir: With Meeting the Moment events, does Haveford have a role with its values to give space for offensive values to grow and be represented. The bar for not having something is very high as you said. Does that mean that any idea can have a place at Haverford. With the ADL protest, the concerns from students are that they view it as an organization that uses antisemitism as a weapon to dehumanize many. That’s horrible though, but if it’s not physical violence, is that okay to be at Haverford?
Jesse: And they are contested. The reason I say the bar is high, and it’s subjective. In the space where that is a strong argument, and people will make compelling arguments in that direction. Others can make arguments in the other direction. Would we rather not have the argument, or confront it. I would say, we’re going to allow those arguments that are potentially in that category because they need to be addressed directly. As citizens of the world, you will all run into ideas you find problematic, and you have to figure out how to argue against them. It is my view, this is me, not the institution, we want Haverford to be a place that prepares you for these challenges and discomforts you will face. In the beyond campus world no one will protect you from offensive ideas. Haverford allowing it to occur on campus is not the same as Haverford saying they agree with a certain group.
Yehyun: Thank you. We would love to look into the open committee structure. For the students reading the minutes, hopefully by having a better understanding of Meeting the Moment, it can have a better outreach and impact on students.
Victoria: We came in with a set of questions, thank you Kabir and Grant for also bringing questions. Haverford is definitely a place where we can foster a dialogue and learn how to handle disagreements. Even the nature of this meeting can be reflective of how we handle certain situations and conflict. I look forward to continuing these types of conversations with this programing. Thinking about how we make the intent more explicit and handling that intent will be important.
Jesse: Kabir to your point, one of the things sitting with me these days post election, as an officer of Haverford I am not here to talk about the validity of either candidate. The fact that the majority of this country voted in one direction and you probably would not have seen that trend on this campus. I don’t know if we are doing the students any favors to have them blindsided by these sets of ideas. Should we have practiced, should those ideas have been on campus somewhere so we can say here’s why I have a problem with that. Is not just this campus, one could argue this is greater Philadelphia.
Yehyun: Thank you so much for coming.
Jesse: Thank you, let me know what you decide with Meeting the Moment.
Kabir: I think my takeaway is that the name of Meeting the Moment is very apt. It’s confronting students with the power dynamics of the current moment we are in. Similar situation with the genocide in Gaza. I think Meeting the Moment is doing a good job in that aspect.
Victoria: If you have any thoughts, please refer to the ford form. We want to hear from the Haverford student body how they feel about everything.
Kabir: Also come to our office hours!
Old Business
Victoria: We can pivot back to old business. First, last week we had the affinity and community house groups come and relay information about budgeting and how they have been impacted by that. We discussed what the conversations are that we need to have. We got a communication from Scott that he would like to further this conversation. This is an ongoing conversation.
Some other old business includes, a long time ago we talked about how the electric blue bus does not have handrails. We talked a lot in general about overcrowding.We just got an update from the Campus Safety Student Advisory Committee. The electric blue bus now has handrails!
Yehyun: I adjourn this meeting at 1:32pm.
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