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Original art for The Clerk by Nava Mach '27

Students’ Council Minutes – 12/15/2024

Attendance: Yehyun, Victoria, Ben, Jack, Dominique, Grace, Caroline, Julie, Kelly, Adam, Coco, Kabir, Grant

Agenda:
Old Business
Community care event ideas
New Business
Last meeting for the semester!!!!!!
Closing remarks
Any other updates since we last met?
Have a good break!

Victoria: Hi guys, this will be very brief. Thank you for coming in. We will start with new business. There is no real business we need to go over today. Keep in mind all of the projects from this semester and how you can push it through till the start of the next semester. We want to thank everyone for all the work they have done this semester. We appreciate everyone working closely with us. This is our first time on StuCo so working with everyone has been a treat.

Yehyun: It has been fun. I have been so blessed to have a productive council. Everyone worked hard in the first quarter to structure their portions and seeing the fruit of that is wondering. We hope starting next semester we can continue to do the work and improve upon what we have learned.

Kabir enters

Victoria: Also, Kabir we have snacks!

Kabir smiles and retrieves a snack

Victoria: Now for old business. Last weekend we asked everyone if they could think of some sort of ideas for programming centered towards community care. How do we tackle stress? How do we tackle burnout? We want to be able to support our students not through a political lens, but through a caring lens. Yehyun and I met with a music therapy group last week, we didn’t have candy grams last year during valentines day and it would be nice to bring them back.

Yehyun: Also as much as we want a care aspect, we also want to increase morale.

Coco: I have two thoughts, but they are position specific. One thing is the way we talk about international students is very general, for ISO it is anyone who went to high school abroad but I think there are other people who might not qualify under this definition but would benefit from events and support for international students for people who are not citizens. Last year, for Asian American Heritage Month, PARC did an Asian American faculty speaking thing and me personally, I find talking with faculty who came from the same space to be very helpful. Maybe do some sort of similar event but with faculty who were once international.

Yehyun: I want to echo that. At Haverford we use the word international students very broadly. Having a more tailored and intentional focus on students who may not fit that general categorization is important. I like that idea of connecting with faculty.

Grace: I was thinking about one of my professors who brought his dog to class one day. His dog is really cute. I also thought that maybe it was once a practice at Haverford to have faculty bring their dogs on Fridays. That would be a fun thing to do. A lot of faculty have really adorable pets.

Emma: The event used to be called four legged friends friday. I don’t know if they had it last year. We should definitely bring it back!

Dominique: There was an old Haverford tradition that I heard about from an alum where during finals week at 3am students would scream at the president’s house and the president would come out with donuts and hot cider. I don’t know if that would work now, but it is a fun idea if Wendy would be on board. If not, I know Swat does a finals week quad scream.

Yehyun: I want to mention that if there are events you really want to organize, you should work with Kelly!

Julie: I was focusing a lot this semester on getting the arts festival through. Since that is done I know that the Hurtford center is really interested in starting up smaller informal workshops and art project times. Like bringing other artists in to do projects with students. I would definitely focus on that going into the following semester.

Kabir: One idea which I thought would be cool would be like a smores night at the dc with guitars in the sunken lounge.

Victoria: I want to talk about the Special Events Committee. I want it to be open to everyone’s ideas. You can come up with stuff specific to your position. Coco had specific ideas as the international student rep, if it is even in the scope of your position it is invited. We will take some time to think about these things.

Grace: Specific to my position, it might be nice to do a disability awareness event. For example, DASH does something similar to this where we have a disability weekend event. I am also thinking about how the ADS director used to do an event about living with disabilities at Haverford. It was a deep dive into what my days are like. It showed that disabilities have a wide spectrum and doesn’t necessarily mean one of two things.

Victoria: If you come up with any ideas, let us know. Kelly in particular if there is work you are doing over winter break please let us know. We will let you go back to finals. Thank you for joining!

Kabir: A big thank you to everyone who has elected me. I have had a lot of fun serving the last two and a half years. I am very proud to have been your representative.

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