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Original art for The Clerk by Nava Mach '27

Students’ Council Minutes – 12/08/2024

Attendance: Yehyun, Victoria, Thea, Emma, Grant, Oliver, Mena, Julie, Caroline, Claire, Kelly, Dominique, Grace, Yasmin, Tristan, Jack, Tim, Luke, Adam, Kabir, Coco

Agenda: 

  1. Old Business
  2. New Business
  3. Haverford 2030
  4. Closing remarks

Old Business

Victoria: We are going to get started, thank you all for joining. This is our second to last meeting. Some old business, if you have not met with us since fall break, you should, even if you don’t have any immediate or urgent updates. We should meet one-on-one to discuss goals for next semester. Another clarification, three as a minimum seems a little extreme, we are going to cut it down to two, next semester there will be a check-in before and after spring break. We are going to go around and share updates. 

New Business

Kabir: We had a meeting with Tyler and reached out to intramural and club sports leaders about our discussion with Danielle Lynch from a couple weeks ago. We are looking at how to get dialogue started and will be reaching back out to Danielle soon. We have also continued working with the dining services committee and have had some productive meetings. We got over 300 responses for the dining services committee survey

Oliver: Most recently, we met with the Haverfest co-heads to start planning more ahead of time and get some budgeting stuff ironed out. We will bring a discussion of an increase to their budget to the budgeting committee soon.

Grant: In the spring I will have a new Co-VP so we will probably meet with Yasmin sometime this week to facilitate a smooth transition. 

Mena: This week I met with Aaron and Oliver to talk about budgeting for the alumni connection event we are hosting in the spring. 

Tim: This past week, Claire, Yasmin, and I met with Brisa to talk about institutional memory for the reproductive health club.

Jack: I have been emailing with the provost to schedule a meeting and discuss my role. 

Julie: Arts festival was yesterday, there was an issue with advertising so turn out wasn’t as high. It went smoothly.

Luke: For the clearness committee, we have found a faculty advisor and dean advisor to give feedback on the ideas we have come up with and help with the process of how we want to word questions. We will be meeting with them this week and start writing the survey.

Coco: Wendy accepted my resolution and the committee will probably be formed next semester. 

Yehyun: I met with the ad hoc committee, including Adam and Caroline. We talked about how to facilitate a space where freedom of expression is valued. We also discussed how we create a culture where radicalism is adopted. We met with the board of managers on friday and it was productive and we discussed how to keep Haverford high in the rankings.

Victoria: We have also started talking more in depth about students’ councils’ role with clubs, how we can streamline the budgeting process and make sure students are accountable for what they ask more for. We talked about safety with clubs and communication with clubs as well.

Dominique: No major updates from the officer of athletics besides talking to Danielle about proposed projects from the athletic plan.

Adam: Senior week committee met last week, we have a tentative schedule and we will talk with Jodi and begin reaching out to relevant campus departments to make sure they are on board with us. There are a few changes from last year in terms of ordering things. We are probably going to send out a grade wide survey to get some more information on what events people want. 

Grace: I met with the SEAC for our final meeting of the semester last week. For SEAC, I am trying to plan for next semester like what we are going to do. We talked about how both Pae and Sarah, the current SEAC co-chairs, are going abroad next semester. We talked about how maybe I should chair the committee for next semester. 

Yasmin: I don’t know if the other librarians mentioned it, but we met with students for reproductive health to help with institutional memory. They mentioned something about general institutional memory for clubs which is something we haven’t thought about, a centralized way for clubs to keep up instructional memory. Since a lot of clubs shut down due to the pandemic, a lot of information was lost. I don’t know if that’s something to think about having in the future. 

Tristan: Nothing major, we are just trying to make sure JSAAP institutional memory is preserved 

Keyla: We want to make sure that we support those coming after us.

Kelly: Everything is going great, we only have two more events this semester, Bob Ross painting and self care weekend. This semester has been going pretty smoothly. 

Haverford 2030

Victoria: Next I want to talk about form topics for the Haverford 2030 implementation strategy. The 2030 implementation committee has faculty, some students, some staff, that are helping figure out how we can implement the 2030 plan which covers a lot of areas, gum going down, new buildings going up… The way the implementation strategy is split up, they have different implementing values, aspire, connect and transform. I want everyone to take five minutes to skim them and think of suggestions and recommendations that students would be the most interested in through a form or tabling. 

Yehyun: One of the reasons we are taking the time to do this is most students don’t know a lot about the 2030 plan. It will be helpful to see what topics catch your eye on behalf of the communities you represent and we can gather that feedback.

Victoria: Kabir asked if we were also bringing specific ideas or items in relation to a topic as they are very gaue. If you have specific questions or things they should be considering, you can mention that. If you just like how one sounds, that’s also okay.

Kabir: For aspire, with the writing interpretation and creativity, it consists of having creative personnel that platform students and their creative ideas. A focus that’s important is how students perceive their faculty. There are a lot of professors that are beloved that don’t stay for long. When we are trying to move towards haverford 2030 are not continuing. Being more intentional with the faculty students connect with and keeping them is important.

Oliver: For dorm renovations, if they are going to tear down gum or do renovation for existing buildings, asking students that live in those buildings for the most pressing issues that need to be fixed would be good. If there are dorms with heating and AC problems, that would be good to ask students about. 

Grant: In general, these are all so vague, I could read them 100 times and not tell you anything specific. The summer experiences for all seemed like one of the few actionable items that would be helpful for students.

Mena: I think they all seem like they have importance. The transform section caught my eye, specifically the part about making Haverford more sustainable. It stuck out to me as it is a word issue, and if we can start by making changes at Haverford that is really beneficial.

Tim: I also liked sustainable Haverford in the transform section. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions caught my eye. 

Jack: Something that caught my eye was the centrality of liberal arts. Bringing up that question of are we getting the full liberal arts experience at a liberal arts college. As Grant said, I am bothered by the fact that they seem to have a lot of buzz words in here.

Victoria: It is very vague for a reason. There are a lot of updates going on. They have to start somewhere. That is why we are asking these questions.

Julie: I was also drawn to summer experiences for all. Our current state is dependent on how students are able to network. Especially for first years, a lot of first years are not given summer experiences. Some experiences privilege students who have been able to make connections and get experiences in the past. I think making it more equitable would transform the student body.

Caroline: I was going to say the same thing as Julie, I would love to see more details on that. Another thing that interested me was the investing in our people, I think this is something that comes from our ad hoc committee. There needs to be investment into the faculty and staff. Building that connection is important. I’m not sure how they are going to do that but I am interested.

Luke: I was drawn to the co-curricular learning model stuff under the connect section. I had the opportunity to talk to Dean McKnight about it a little bit. A position like honor council co-chair is something I learn from as I do it. The idea of dreaming it less of a job but also as a part of my learning experience is interesting to me. 

Coco: I am also interested in the summer experiences for all. It is somewhat related to my resolution. One of things they are trying to do is build a centralized place where you can apply for any summer funding. Right now it is all over the place, and it is hard both on student’s trying to apply and the paperwork is not centralized. Some offices then have underspent funds and some are really competitive. Building on the central platform would be really beneficial.

Claire: The writing interpretation and creativity section, focusing on expanding the humanities and writing. It has been a national wide trend to cut funding from humanities, so it is important that we don’t have that happen. Also the financial aid access like increasing financial aid would be something a lot of students would be in favor of. Finally, in terms of building new buildings, there isn’t a ton of communication in terms of what is happening. Looking at the really big document, turning the apartments into the gateway center, I hadn’t heard about that before. There is not a lot of clarity amongst students about what is going to happen to HCA.

Adam: I think there are three things. The first two are financial. There are ways in which Haverford is inaccessible. Haverford is inherently inaccessible given we reject 7 out of 8 students who apply to come here. Another is financial inaccessibility. We used to be able to afford to be need blind. We need to strengthen the endowment so we can return to being need blind, which would be incredibly valuable. The second is improving pay for visitors. One issue is that we pay our visiting profs very poorly compared to peer institutions. Haverford places very well, so some are willing to work here at a pay cut because they believe it will lead to a tenure job. For visitors that come from certain backgrounds taking a pay cut may not be possible. Working to improve visitor pay would allow us to attract higher quality talent and more diverse pools of talent. Third thing that spoke to me is co-curricular learning. In part, there is a lot that students do outside the classroom. Luke mentioned shifting from thinking of honor council as a job to it as an experience. I think looking at clubs, my work at Havoc has been beneficial in terms of how you can work in a bureaucracy to get things done. 

Thea: The summer experiences for all stood out to me too.

Emma: I was intrigued by elevating haverford athletics under connect. It says they want to enhance campus connections for student athletes and non-athletes alike. I am not sure how this would actually translate into reality given that culture around athletes is very much so dependent on students and how they interact. So I would be interested in how exactly they would implement something like that. 

Yehyun: Two things, the first is financial aid. I want to know how inclusive this scope is, are they considering just coming to Haverford as much as financial aid will cover. There is one thing of paying to get into Haverford but also having to pay to stay at Haverford. So I wonder if they are looking at keeping students financially stable at college. The second thing is the fords in action. We do a huge disservice by not partnering with organizations in Philly, our location communities and organizations. Strengthening that would also lead to a better way of networking and post Haverford job searches. 

Yasmin:  First, summer experiences for all, we have one task for the international student taks resolution, there will be students in that community. Second, they say that a lot of the committees are composed of students, and that is definitely a very Haverfordian fashion of doing things. I didn’t really understand which students are involved, where they are involved, more clarity in that would be interesting. Third, I liked the fords in action components, there are a lot of cool classes that do field trips and stuff. TriCo Philly sponsors a lot of events for this. There are a lot of interdisciplinary actions drawn from this grant so I want to learn more about that. 

Kelly: I think that summer experiences for all is important especially since there is going to be an after Haverford we all need job experiences. They also do consider class in the aspire component and the financial aid aspect is interesting and seeing how they are planning on continuing that. 

Dominique: The work I have been focusing has to do mostly with the one-team aspect. Student athletes make up such a big portion of the student population so I think a lot of students would want to get involved in that. Outside of athletics, the financial aid section stood out to me. The goal is commendable as the school gets more and more expensive. I am curious as to what the detailed plan for this action is given that the action proposed in the google doc is vague and does not outline how to support students throughout their four years at Haverford. 

Yasmin: Considering Haverford is out of the curve when funding summer experiences. If a student gets an unpaid experience it is hard to find funding for it which can greatly reduce students’ options. 

Yehyun: Some experiences people find are in tune with their passions and can be unpaid or underfunded which make it hard to do those opportunities.

Victoria: Next, we want to think about post inauguration events for next semester in relation to your roles. Just cookie dough ideas and bring them to us next time. We met with this music therapy group that does this workshop about navigating burnout, stress, and anxiety through music. We would like to put together some itinerary or program list. 

Keyla: I forget what office hosted the herbal destressor event and brought Dope Botanicals on campus to do an info sesh of herbs as tools to destress and had a tea building component!! It was super cute.

Yehyun: It is not about politics, it’s about how we care for our students, our friends and peers. Regardless of political ideologies we want to be there for one another and create a sense of community and care. We invite a wide range of creativity and ideas in how we structure a robust itinerary. 

Victoria: We will end the meeting.

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