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Original art for The Clerk by Nava Mach '27

Students’ Council Minutes 2/4/24

Attendance: Emma, Thea, Jorge, Maria, Emmeline, Kabir, Grant, Jesse, Ben, Julia, Julie, Kelly, Vy, Yasmin, Matthias, Grace

Agenda: 

  1. Check-ins
  2. Presidential Updates 
  3. Plenary Updates
  4. Semester Check-ins 

Check In

Jorge: Everyone, welcome to our meeting. 

Maria: Lets go around and share updates about your position, plenary updates will be later.

Grant: In terms of the report on committees, we have reached out to all the reps and have gotten responses by almost everyone. We will make our report by next week. We are also working on picking a time for the resolution writing workshop. 

Jesse: I have no updates.

Ben: I am setting up a meeting with Dean Keane to talk about bionic. The campus safety advisory committee is meeting Friday. Plenary planning continues, setting up EMS, facilities and BLAST reservations.

Julie: No updates for me. I do have an idea for an artistic network on campus. It has been very difficult to get in contact with artists and art groups. 

Kelly: The major things I have done this week are: Haverfest Co-Heads have been chosen, Lutton Fund applicant(s) will be chosen this week, SECS has planned all events prior to spring break (events after spring break are on different stages of planning), and SECS will send out an email this week about all of our events before spring break. Our next event is our Super Bowl Watch Party on Sunday, so if anyone wants a comfortable place to watch with others then come to Stokes Auditorium. Reminder that SECS and I do have a feedback form so if anyone has feedback or really wants a certain event you can use that or just email directly to me or hc-secs@haverford.edu. Some people have already been doing so, and we have many collaborations planned. We are also working on getting SECS on EMS. Also a small semester reminder that the student engagement office has snacks and a this or that fun weekly survey so visit them.

Emmeline: Senior week things are going well, we are going to have committee meetings on Friday afternoons. I met with Grace to talk about Lavender graduation because an anonymous student reached out and was concerned about accessibility. So we are working to make Lavender graduation more accessible for students that are not out ot their families and to make sure it does not end up on the internet 

Vy: The student athlete advisory committee reached out to have quotes from black athletes so we will be having short videos and quotes from black athletes on Fridays this month. 

Matthias: The board of managers meeting is next weekend. I have been preparing for that. For those unaware, there was discussion at the end of last semester between Students for Peace for them to meet with Investure to talk about Haverford endowment and their management of it. That meeting happened on Monday. It was a joint task between concerns over anti militarism as well as environmental concerns. Investure gave a little bit of an overview on how the current management system works. They answered questions about what info we can know, and what actions the school can take to better reorient how we are investing our money. These conversations are still ongoing. It seemed like everyone was satisfied with the room they had to work with.

Grace: I am organizing meetings between me and the ADS office. I am meeting with them tomorrow. 

Jorge: We were also thinking of inviting ADS to exec board and stakeholders. The CoSecs will reach out in an email.

Grace: In my meeting this week, I am going to discuss the accessibility of social spaces. 

Yasmin: This week I have been meeting individually with StuCo members for a librarian check-in as we work on updating position responsibilities so I can know more about the main projects we’ve been working on, how much time commitment has been dedicated to StuCo and how position transitions have happened in the past. I will send out an updated calendar link so if you still haven’t met with me please schedule a slot for this week. For the coming week I look forward to meeting the librarian candidates to know who will be working with me over the next few months. 

Julia: I have an update on the international student lounge. The lounge has been renovated and is currently in the process of refurnishing. I plan on having an opening event in March, possibly after spring break. I am meeting with Natasha this coming week to discuss ways of getting feedback from the community on how the lounge can serve them best. As always, if anyone has any questions or feedback about the lounge, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or to the International Student Support Office. 

Thea: Our main update is we got an email from Don saying that the skate house will hopefully be fully renovated shortly after spring break! The main thing holding it up is installing wifi.

Emma: We also have a meeting with Scott on Tuesday to discuss updating the poster policy.

Presidential Updates 

Maria: Updates from the co-treasurers, they are working right now on budgeting. The process this semester was new and faster than the process in the past. This is so clubs can get their items sooner. Be on the lookout for any updates. Feel free to reach out to them with questions.

Jorge: Right now the treasurers are trying to allocate all of the budget but there are always more requests than the budget available.

Maria: We also had a budgeting committee meeting on Thursday. We talked about extraordinary budgets. They make up more than 3% of the total budget. The treasurers reached out to clubs to discuss ways to make your budget requests itemized. For clubs, please itemize your budgets and don’t do lump sums, it makes things a lot easier. 

Jorge: If a club gets their budget approved and has questions about what they can and cannot order, they should feel free to reach out to the treasurers. Moving on, we met with President Wendy this week. We were talking about what it means for the president of the college to sign a resolution after plenary. We are navigating shared governance and what plenary means. We also talked about the Clerk and how the Clerk can play a more active role in informing the community and making sure all narratives on campus are being expressed. We also recognize that the Clerk is understaffed and had a lot of funding issues last semester. So we were discussing how we can support independent journalism on campus. 

Maria: We have the board of managers dinner this coming week. This past week I attended the board of managers meeting and we discussed campus climate and community guidelines within the board, and how we can instill values. One thing I shared is the reality of what the honor code means to us as a campus. I think a lot of board of managers have a very different relationship with the honor code than we do now. I think it is oftentimes not as applicable to people outside of the student body because we are the ones bound to it. There were conversations about the effectiveness of policy to deal with discrimination and how we can have policy with relationship building and use those things together. This was especially related to issues of freedom of speech, freedom of expression. It is a balance of taking into account accountability and holding space for power and privilege. One of the examples where we did a good job taking both of those things into account that I gave is the new hc-allstudents policy, it takes into account community feedback and DEI while also having respectful expression of speech. They were very impressed with the policy.

Jorge: We are looking for a librarian, we will be reaching out to candidates this week. We want to choose a librarian by the end of the week. We want everything organized to transition to the next StuCo, and get the website officially open.

Maria: We were very impressed by all of the applications for librarians. If you are not chosen for librarian please keep in mind our upcoming elections!

Plenary Updates

Maria: We did have our first plenary planning dinner this past Thursday, we discussed the timeline for plenary. There will be an increase in boba for this plenary! We also might have tote bags. Today we will be finalizing the budget. Can we run through t-shirts and tote bags and stickers first.

Julie: Irene and I met yesterday to discuss the merch budget. We have estimates for t-shirts, stickers, and tote bags. One of the questions we want to ask is if we prefer tote bags that are 12.5 by 12 inches or 15.5 by 15 inches? We may be able to do a bit more t-shirts so we might do white plus two other colors. We also thought of a theme for plenary, which is camp. We are thinking about spring, nature, silliness, and nuts. It is still very vague. 

Maria: We can invite community feedback for the theme.

Julie: We are doing a mixture of circle and square stickers. Depending on what the budget allows for we have many options in terms of quantity. We want to double t-shirts and stickers from last time.

Maria: Were there enough stickers last time?

Julie: There were about as many stickers as shirts. Everyone who got merch got everything. Everyone left got nothing. Having a lot more merch is good so people have options. I would do more than 200 total stickers this time.

Jorge: I think we need to keep the incentive of getting there on time to get merch. 

Julie: Yeah if we got 600 t-shirts that would be half of everyone at plenary. 

Maria: I don’t think there would be enough money for 600 shirts. I think the numbers in the spreadsheet are good. Let’s do 15*15 tote bags and have a little money as a buffer.

Jorge: The logic is you get a shirt instead of a tote bag?

Julie: Yeah.

Jorge: I think that will cover almost everyone. 

Maria: Does this budget include shipping?

Julie: Probably not. Very general question. Do we want the same design for the tote bag and shirts?

Maria: We don’t have to decide yet, we can see what designs we come up with. Boba is done. Are these the same masks as last time?

Grace: I think masking is important especially when we are all that close. There might be some people who would rather go in person and would feel safer wearing masks. 

Maria: We will keep it as people should wear masks. We then need to order masks.

Maria: If we have approved our budget. Matthias, can you let Yuriko know she can place the order for boba? Everything else is more when we are ready to order. The designs should be done for next week. Which brings us to our second task, the assigned task sheet. I made a new sheet for us to keep track of what we need to do. We made a small twist to the teams, we put Emmeline in charge of helping Ben with physical logistics. Yasmin we put you on day of logistics with Vy. We wanted to reach out to BLAST to schedule a meeting. 

Emmeline: Do you want me to cc you?

Maria: Yes, that will be for next week. Kabir, did you reserve a room for planning? We can’t rent a van without you being certified yet? For merch, design needs to be done and orders placed. For the design, if you want us to vote on it in the slack we can do that. 

Jorge: Everything looks great!

Grace: I can set up the zoom for plenary.

Maria: Can I put you on the physical logistics team?

Grace: Yeah.

Jorge: Grace, can you make sure when you reach out, make either Ben or Vy be the owner of the zoom. Last time I was the owner, but I was really busy, someone else should be in charge.

Grace: Can you make a list of everyone who wants to be on zoom as co-host?

Maria: Yes. If you haven’t done your check in please stay now. Unless, that is it. 

Jorge: Also look at plenary tasks for day of and fill your name in with stuff you can do.

Kelly: I can also ask SECs people.

Maria: Thank you. Meeting adjourned.

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