Students’ Council Executive Board Minutes – 12/06/2024

Attendance: Victoria, Yehyun, Thea, Emma, Kabir, Oliver, Grant 

Agenda: StuCo Exec Board Agenda 24/25

1. Call to order (1:00-1:02) 
2. Roll Call (1:02-1:05)
3. Adoption of Agenda (1:05-1:06)
4. Approval of Minutes (1:06-1:07)
5. Community Comments (1:07-1:17)
6. Old Business (1:17-1:27)
7. New Business 1 (1:27-1:42): StuCo & Club Policies
8. Adjournment (1:57-2:00)

Call to Order

Victoria: I call this meeting to order at 1:05pm.

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. 

StuCo & Club Policies

Yehyun: We as StuCo want to establish a mechanism to make sure that clubs are using their funds appropriately. 

Grant: I think we should check in on clubs to ensure they have the members and resources they need proportionate to the membership of the club. I think there are some clubs that receive too many resources for the number of members they have, and some clubs that are essentially friends groups that are getting funding.

Yehyun: One of the reasons why we want to talk about this is there aren’t a lot of structures where we as StuCo can be in touch with how values and missions of clubs can be translated to how clubs are funded. The lack of connection has led to sometimes dispensing of our budgets or disproportionate allocation of our budgets. We haven’t had allocations, we aren’t trying to police or define a successful club. We are concerned about keeping clubs accountable to the mission they stated and using funds with the idea in mind that this is from StuCo and is all of students’ money. We want to outline that, for example lego club, the legos they make are still the property of the student body. The physics department asked to display legos in the lounge, and the lego club said yes. Those kinds of interactions are what we hope to establish as a norm. 

Victoria: There is some missing context, in that, I’m worried the message could be construed, of “you have a thing you want to do just for fun, no, it must have some purpose” That is not necessarily what that example is supposed to be saying. What’s missing is that in some clubs, every year students ask for items. We don’t know what happens to those items after the fact. For example, in lego club, we don’t know what they do with the finished pieces after. In that case it was organized so they could give a piece for a display in a lounge. We have been told that a lot of clubs are asking for money for bubble machines. But according to RESE they have a bunch in storage. There is a mistranslation in where the items that are bought by our funding are going. In terms of the concern with “friend groups” getting money to do what they want, something we want to streamline is if the intent of your club is just to have some fun, making sure that that spirit is upheld in a way that upholds the budgeting system. We are not trying to get rid of or police groups. We need a more streamlined process so we can better understand inventory. It’s not the concern of values and friends, just inventory.

Oliver: We have been working with Student Engagement on this. It’s a big thing, and part of the issue is clubs aren’t super aware that we can help them store things. Us doing that is really what we want instead of items staying in someone’s dorm room, because things can get lost. I think, on our end, we have been trying to make it clear that is the expectation. Even if we wanted to police everything, there are so many clubs and groups that it would not be feasible. Working on awareness and going by the honor code works well, but we can come up with some creative solutions. 

Grant: The only thing I could think of is at the end of each year, we ask the leaders of the club to submit inventory. We have a spreadsheet of every item we purchase for budgeting. If on that spreadsheet, we can note which items are perishables and which are expected to be long term use, and we ask club leaders to ask where the item is, and we expand and ask every semester so they are aware that we are keeping track of items. They can keep track of it, and we can too.

Victoria: If students are losing things, that is a way we can keep groups accountable, and potentially reevaluate. 

Yehyun: Two things, we aren’t trying to introduce a punishment model, we don’t want to alarm people. We have been maintaining this trust, concern and respect amongst clubs and StuCo. The reason we bring this up is we want to explore better ways to have more sustainable club networks. We want to have more accountability in the ways we keep inventory. We want to make sure we have a good connection with clubs. If clubs come to us and say they aren’t getting enough funding we have a perspective so that we can help them. It’s hard to track individual clubs in how we can best support them. If we develop a better relationship we can better respond as a council in the future. 

Kabir: For people who interact more with student engagement, when people are trying to start and develop a club, what exists to help people found and grow the club. Grant and I have been working with the director of athletics, in addition to long-term athletic goals, a network with Tyler to support club sports goals. I was wondering if there is an existing structure of support for new or existing clubs so if they have goals they can achieve them. Basically a long term support network so we can keep in touch. There is a team they can turn to, an aid in the process.

Oliver: If someone asks for support or advice, engage can help with advertising on instagram or directly on engage. There isn’t a set structure partially because organizations have different needs. We could make the resources we have more clearly available. There is a question for all of this of labor of student engagement or StuCo members and having solutions and programs that are not taxing in that respect.

Grant: In terms of StuCo, there are some underutilized positions. The class reps could expand their role to help with this. 

Yehyun: Today is more so about workshopping ideas. 

Victoria: I think before we start thinking about who, we think about what we would even do. For myself, the main goal here is structure and organization and streamlining conversations through clubs and StuCo. I think engage is really lacking in terms of its user interface, some active, some inactive. It’s really up to the discretion of club owners if they are making sure member lists and contact names are updated. That would be a good starting place to make sure we have a consistent log of who is running a club and who we can contact from clubs. Something else I am thinking about is the process of becoming a club has been washed out in a way. My understanding is you just need a head of the club, treasurer and three other members. 

Grant: When I created clubs I just put my friends on the list so I can pass that.

Victoria: In that example, having a treasurer or being a head is not necessarily fulfilled. I think that’s where some of this funding stuff becomes problematic because we are not making sure that clubs have a system of accountability and understand how to use their funds when they request them. 

Yehyun: I will say this, as some of us who have created or lead clubs can relate to, it is a lot of work. We don’t want to overload the student leaders, but create pathways or streamline those burdens so it is easier to manage these aspects of clubs. Having an inventory section on engage could really help so that stays on engage and is more centralized. Some of your interests, hobbies or passions may not be mainstream so it may be hard to find three other people who are interested. We don’t want to gatekeep clubs being created but it’s also important to see how that flexibility can be abused sometimes. It’s more of what are some ideas we can implement and some scaffolding can create so both Student engagement and student’s council can create an easier streamlined club experience.

Grant: In terms of inventory, there is a section on engage where you can add documents. We could have clubs upload inventory there or reference what they purchased and where it is. 

Victoria: I think that’s definitely something we should be asking groups to do. Meeting of the clubs is only once a semester, we will also want to look back at the information being given and see if there is any room for improvement. We can make that a requirement for funding to upload inventory. I know that sounds intense, but it’s where people need to understand that the money we are approving, whatever you are buying from that, unless it is food, arts supplies, things going that get used up, then it shouldn’t be perishable. It is still in the ownership of student’s council. If your club gets disbanded, we can hold onto them and give them out in the future or if your club gets back together. It’s not us trying to be sticklers or punish people, but it’s about sustainability, structure. And keeping ourselves accountable. Also StuCo has a better idea of how we are spending money and giving funds to clubs. 

Kabir: I want to reiterate the importance of having engage be updated. In my experience, half the people on engage have graduated. The resource that can tell students about clubs needs to be updated. The second thing is I don’t know more than five people who use engage. No one’s gonna update something that no one is using. We need to find a way to improve this. 

Oliver: We require clubs to re-register at the beginning of each year, but if clubs don’t re-register because they don’t want funding or they don’t exist, there is no getting them off of engage. They should be updating the roster even if they aren’t getting funding.

Victoria: Can a club still be called a club if its not registered because they don’t want money?

Oliver: We would prefer if they don’t call themselves clubs if they aren’t registered .Saying they are a club at Haverford implies some oversight and approval by Haverford. But we can’t really stop people from calling themselves a club if they want to. Ideally we would have a discussion with them and tell them to register to be a club. 

Victoria: So you can register to be a club but not ask for funding?

Oliver: Yes.

Victoria: We can reiterate that more strongly.

Yehyun: Registration does not imply you will apply for funding. But it helps us know how many clubs we are accommodating. I think it also is important, I use engage before applying to Haverford to see the clubs available. When I came here a lot of the clubs listed on engage no longer exist. This is something that us as current students need to be more accountable for for prospective students. 

Thea: Can we just delete clubs off engage if they don’t register to incentivize them.

Victoria: We can have some sort of tabs, where we have active or inactive so students can know that clubs existed, the problem with deleting is institutional memory.

Oliver: I don’t know how easy making physical changes to the engage website is since it’s a third party website. IITS can make changes to websites. 

Grant: There is a thing that says category, and the category could be active or inactive.

Oliver: The categories aren’t available if you are a prospective student.

Grant: We can brainstorm.

Yehyun: We can work with IITS and see what is available.

Kabir: For a long term small goal, our secretaries do a good job making an events calendar, eventually a master meeting of club meetings might be good. That would require a lot of labor and discipline.

Victoria: I like that as a goal. Sometimes I hear concerns about some clubs being closed. So it’s really just friends hanging out. And that is something we don’t want. Clubs at haverford are open to any student, the common denominator should be your interest in the club. I think that is a really good goal. It sounds like right now, we are thinking of the meeting of the clubs, improving engage, and improving sections in the budgeting process. We have a few good working ideas. I want to also open this. If people have opinions, let us know in the fords form. If there is anything that is working well, let us know, if there are things not working well, let us know, if you have ideas, let us know!

Yehyun: Come to our office hours to talk in person!

Oliver: If we want to make changes to meeting of the clubs next semester, we should talk more before or after break.

Victoria: We can do that next exec board.

Oliver: We already have changes in mind based on this semester.

Victoria: We can make that an agenda item for next week. I adjourn this meeting at 1:36pm.