Attendance: Thea, Yasmin, Julie, Coco, Caroline, Aaron, Mena, Jack, Dominique, Yehyun, Victoria, Oliver, Tim, Grant, Kabir, Adam, Luke, Grace, Kelly, Yuriko, Bukky, Jorja, James, Emma, Tristan, Claire, Ben
Agenda:
- Old Business
- New Business
- Closing remarks
Old Business
Yehyun: Good afternoon, we’re going to get started. We wanted to remind you to book your one-on-ones. Today we want to hear from you guys about how plenary went and later we are going to get a facilities fund update from the co-secs. I wanted to break our conversations about plenary in two ways, first generally how did plenary go, then if possible from each of your positions, what went well and what can be done better. I wanted to open up the floor.
Adam: I thought it was a huge success. We hit quorum rather quickly and had good discourse about the issues brought up at plenary. I think that we were able to get through it all in a timely manner, and even when we risked losing quorum, social pressure was applied to maintain quorum. I think it worked really really well.
Mena: On behalf of the first year class, everyone said it was less boring than they thought it would be. I think a lot of the first years enjoyed the Covid topic the most because it had the most debate. I pretty much only heard good things from the first years.
Grant: The one thing I would say, we should try to keep people up to date about things that happened especially during long moments of silence like when the friendly amendment was being drafted.
Victoria: In general I think we will need someone consciously checking the time. Yehyun and I were not as cognizant of that when we were chairing.
Yasmin: Something I am concerned about from the day I was tabling for plenary and the recent elections. A lot of first years didn’t seem to know the consequences of not reaching quorum and asked why they had to be there. I also heard about elections, a lot of students were waiting for people to tell them to vote instead of reading the election statements and thinking critically about who they want to vote for. I am really concerned about this.
Mena: With that, do we want me to create something to inform the freshman class more?
Yasmin: I think it would be more of a customs thing.
Yehyun: I think as we are getting ready for spring plenary, an email dedicated to plenary to the underclassmen would be good.
Kabir: I think there was a misunderstanding about the amendment for the second resolution. The amendment was not acting on the full description of the actual resolution. The lack of clarity stemmed from not understanding the resolution itself and what an amendment should be.
Victoria: The hardest process is because it was the day of, and the first time the amendment writers had seen and heard the resolution. It made it a very convoluted process. I don’t know if anyone who has been on council in the past has seen it.
Thea: Yes, there was one two years ago.
Victoria: We can talk more about the amendment process and what that looks like. Even the writing process was very messy.
Grant: In terms of amendments there is a lot of leeway in the constitution right now, they aren’t actually defined in the constitution. I think people should have the opportunity to present amendments in person but it could definitely be facilitated better.
Victoria: Someone told me that we need to watch more closely when counting quorum. We have the bathroom door and then the actual exit door. Some people would go through the bathroom exit and then go under the stanchions to leave the GIAC.
Mena: We tried to watch it. 4 people left at one point that way and then came back. We did our best.
Victoria: We had water in the GIAC, but I didn’t think people knew it was there. We can make a louder statement next time about that.
Dominique: People were also leaving to go to the vending machines. I know we talked about getting snacks, it might be helpful to have food.
Yehyun: Now let’s talk about if there was anything to share from certain positions?
Victoria: Can you clarify what you mean by position.
Yehyun: Mic passer, quorum, boba, physical logistics, zoom, satellite rooms, etc… Some people from the satellite rooms said the zoom voting was skipped by accident because there was a delay for one of the resolutions. We are also keeping that in mind to make sure there is no delay or lag.
Grace: Can I request that the satellite rooms join the zoom as general participants instead of as a panelist. If they had been a panelist they wouldn’t have been counted as participants for quorum.
Yehyun: A lesson we learned, we need to have more people as panelists for the zoom. If we have technical difficulties where the zoom computer loses internet, we could have other members with ethernet or better connections to facilitate that right away. For the next plenary when we have the panelist/zoom sign up we should get more people.
Victoria: If there is nothing else about improvements, what went over well?
Kabir: I thought we moved between pros and cons quickly, we moved at an effective pace.
Yehyun: For those with more critical roles in preparing for plenary, like budget, boba, and merch, how was that? Did you have enough time, space, and direction to fulfill your tasks?
Julie: The thing is with the merch, we got all the designs really fast, but we didn’t hear back from the budget people until two weeks before plenary that we could place the orders. I was told by the t-shirt vendors that it would take up to three weeks so I was really worried. The delay in having the budget solidified was difficult to get everything ready to be ordered.
Yehyun: We can definitely have the budget team and merch team work more closely together.
Julie: I am not getting extra smalls again, no one took them. We had some extra. I know we got extra for size inclusivity, but if we had instead put that towards other sizes it would have been better.
Victoria: Thank you everyone for sharing, we will throw it to the co-secretaries.
Emma: We have decided on what we are using the facilities fund for: we are revamping Zubrow Commons! This will include repainting the room so it’s not the sickly yellow, we’re also going to get rolling chairs to make it similar to the collaborative space in the library. We’ll get whiteboards too. It’ll be another space where students can work in groups. A lot of profs have office hours in Zubrow so this will be a nice space for them. I think on one of the walls we’ll put a TV that will serve as a projector. So profs can project things during student hours or TAs can use it as well. Any questions?
Thea: The other ideas we voted on as a council were either shot down by don or the facilities they impacted.
Emma: Our first idea, where we were going to make a low stimulation room in the library did not end up working out. We would have either had to take away seating or carrell space from Lutnick and there is already such a high demand for both that the library did not want to do that.
New Business
Victoria: Some new business, election results, we had the elections for students that are studying abroad next semester, Grant and Yasmin will be our VPs next semester, then she’s not here, but Abby Litchfield will be our junior rep.
*clapping*
Victoria: I don’t know if anyone had comments on that process. If you do, now is the time.
Grant: I look forward to coming back in the spring. There is a lot of stuff to continue working on. Kabir is great, but it’s always nice to have improvement. We will continue to work on the constitution. I also want to maintain continuity in the appointments process. We started to put up fliers for our dining center survey. We are looking forward to working with Tom from the DC to make some changes we think students will enjoy.
Yasmin: I am excited to work with Grant and continue going to meetings I already go to, but this time being able to vote and count towards quorum. I look forward to continuing working with everyone!
Victoria: Next, we do have two meetings left. We will be meeting on the 8th and the 15th! Also the board of managers are not returning to campus on December 6th, but we will be having a zoom meeting. We do not know what the agenda for this meeting is yet. Ben or Yuriko, do you have a better sense of the agenda?
Ben: No, not yet.
Yuriko: Last year we didn’t get a thorough agenda either. There was a facilities meeting. They shared the agenda close to the meeting date and told us to attend what we could.
Victoria: If there is a student affairs committee and there is anything you want brought up, just let us know. That lets us transition into the last thing. Since we haven’t met in a couple weeks, I don’t know if people have substantial updates. We can go around and share our updates.
Adam: The senior week committee is progressing. I met with Jodi last Thursday to discuss ways in which we can move forward with the support of RESE.
Oliver: Rolling budgeting is closing tomorrow (Monday) at 11:59pm. We are working on a report to send to the student body about budgeting this semester.
Julie: On December 7th, the day before our next meeting we are having the fall semester student arts festival, we have 15 artists, music and food. Everyone should come!
Coco: Prepping for the resolution approval.
Caroline: Constitution committee on honor council is making cleaning edits and also may make a separate resolution to the honor code for the spring.
Luke: Clearness committee, there is a lot going on, we have gotten access to the last survey in 2019. We are looking for an overall question and dean and faculty advisors.
Caroline: Also a student survey will be going out about AI on Monday.
Aaron: I met with Marissa Dietch from the CCPA and she would like us to use the Alumni Weekend in February as a part of our event. We are going to do a networking event with the sophomores and alumni with the CCPA. I talked to Mena and we may collaborate with the freshmen class. My next step is to meet with the co-treasurers to discuss budgeting.
Ben: I am girding up my loins for the board of managers meeting.
Kabir: We are meeting with Tyler to follow up on our conversation.
Jack: I’m sitting on two committees and still figuring out my role. These are the Existing Curriculum Committee and the Committee for Student Standing and Progress (CSSP).
Dominique: I got access to the athletic action plan, which is Haverford 2030 for the athletic department. It’s a six year plan. Some cool things happening is the OAR has delegated funding for student athletes. A lot of student athletes are starting to have study groups in their teams.
We are also trying to improve connections with students and faculty via the faculty liaison.
Kelly: Events have been going well. First week December 6th, 9pm-12am is casino themed snowball (DC basement). The other events we will have, Bob Ross painting (Dec 14) then self care and study events (Dec 14-15) There are other things in the works. For the Clyde E. Lutton fund, ithas been given to EHT for their Chicago show next semester, everything is going great. SECS email coming out next week.
Tristan: Post plenary we are making sure there is a smooth transition for the next co-heads.
Victoria: Since plenary is over, we can go back to some of the first initiatives we outlined in our first email at the beginning of the semester. We have begun meeting with students for reproductive health again to talk about making period products available for all students on campus. While also, help maintain other roles that they do to be student led and run.
Yehyun: We are also furthering our conversation with the NEST on food justice. We are keeping our eyes and ears on the campus climate. If there are any concerns you have about Haverford, please utilize our office hours.
Victoria: We want to do spring programming in response to global climate, with the election and things. If people have specific ideas let us know. This meeting is adjourned.
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