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The Squirrel’s Scoop, 4/6/2022

Welcome to The Squirrel’s Scoop—The Clerk’s weekly news bulletin. The Squirrel’s Scoop brings you the biggest stories from the past week in one place.

Pre-registration For Classes Opens This Week

In an email on April 1, Director of Academic Assessment and Operations James Keane announced that pre-registration for the Fall 2022 semester would begin on Monday, April 4, at 8 am. Students will have until Friday, April 15, to enroll in classes, at which point pre-registration will close. Fall 2022 registration will then reopen for students on August 22, one week before the start of the fall semester.

Students are permitted to pre-register for all of the classes they would like to take next fall. During the summer, the lottery process will occur for any courses that are overenrolled, and students will be notified as to whether they have been officially added or dropped from the class or if they have been placed on the waitlist. Students can change their class selections or register for new classes if they are dropped from one or more classes when Fall 2022 registration reopens in late August.  

Plenary Process Comes to a Close

As of last Friday, April 1, the Honor Code was successfully ratified. The ratification process, which students opened at Plenary the previous Sunday, required two-thirds of the student body to vote on ratification to hit quorum. This threshold was surpassed, with over 900 students participating in the vote. If the vote failed, the Honor Code would have entered a dangerous limbo, requiring students to complete a Special Plenary to redress their concerns.

“It was wonderful to see student governance in action during the Code ratification process,” said Honor Council Co-head Sophia Kaplan ’23. The ballot invited students to share their thoughts on the Code along with their votes. Kaplan reports that “the majority of the student body feels empowered by and invested in the Code,” but that “there is always room for improvement.’ She concludes, “we look forward to seeing the ways that current and future students continue to take ownership over this living document.”

As for the resolutions passed by students at Plenary, they are headed to President Wendy Raymond’s desk to be accepted, accepted with stipulations, or rejected. Though sometimes seen as a formality, this step is essential and codified in the resolution process. According to the Haverford Students’ Association Constitution, Raymond has 30 days upon receipt of the resolutions to issue a response, at which point they will go into effect.

Quaker Consortium to Resume Fall 2022

In the same April 1 email, Director of Academic Assessment and Operations James Keane announced that the Quaker Consortium, Haverford’s consortium partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, is set to resume during the Fall 2022 semester. The Quaker Consortium allows Haverford students to take classes at UPenn and vice versa, but it has been suspended since the beginning of the pandemic.

Keane noted in the email that despite the current intention to reopen the Quaker Consortium in the fall, this is subject to change because of the unpredictable nature of COVID. He expressed that he would “pass along updates as [he] receive[s] them.” Keane also suggested that students who wish to register for UPenn courses this fall should also register for an extra class in the Tri-co “in the event [their] Penn request is not approved, or the Consortium is suspended again.”

Climate Survey Faces Low Participation

On March 22, the Climate Survey opened to the Haverford community. This survey was designed by a group of administrators, faculty, students, and staff to gauge the sense of belonging of members of the Haverford community. It is open to students, faculty, and staff, and the data collected will drive college decision-making in the coming years. As President Wendy Raymond put it in an email to students, the results from the survey “will allow for refinement and alignment; reactions and response; connective tissue to future efforts; and sensemaking as well as next steps.”

Unfortunately, participation has been quite low so far. A week after the survey opened, a sign in the Dining Center displayed the percentage of students, faculty, and staff that had completed the survey: each group was hovering at about 20% participation.

Without a wide sample of student input, it is difficult for the survey to represent the student body’s experiences accurately. To combat this issue, the College has incentivized completing the survey by awarding students a chance to win 50 dining dollars if they do so. The survey is open until April 22.

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