Student Council Finalizes Passing New Dress Code

Student Council (StuCo) voted 54 to 30 this Tuesday to send the adjusted dress code to faculty for consideration. In a meeting Monday night, Policy Committee proposed the dress code proposal to dorm heads. According to Policy Committee heads, seniors Emily Lemmerman and Sachin Holdeim, the group of about 30 faculty members prefered a simpler and more lenient dress code than the one currently offered and the one StuCo suggested. The faculty hoped the dress code would allow them to focus their energy on teaching rather than enforcing proper dress, Lemmerman and Holdheim said. The Executive Board will meet this week with department heads and deans to discuss the adjustments.The dress code brought to faculty will serve as more of a “suggestion,” according to Lemmerman and Holdheim, which faculty are allowed to alter as they please. The dress code faculty pass for next year, the Policy Committee co-heads said, could be the same or completely different from StuCo’s suggestion. Faculty may also decide not to change the current dress code at all.

“We are excited about the dress code passing through StuCo and are going to work hard to compromise with the faculty.”

StuCo hopes that although faculty make the final decision about dress code, both the faculty and student opinon will continue to be considered.“We are excited about the dress code passing through StuCo and are going to work hard to compromise with the faculty,” StuCo President and senior Benjamin Cohen said. “It’s important that we carry the sentiments of the study body to the faculty.”There was some disagreement among StuCo members during the previous meeting about option one’s ban on flannel shirts, but members decided to send the proposal to the faculty regardless, rather than voting to continue the discussion. According to StuCo member and lower Nada Zohayr, those who voiced their opinions during the previous meeting did not represent the opinion of most StuCo members, which may be why the overall vote was to send the proposal to faculty.“The majority of the people who voted for option two [last week] are the most talkative, so it felt like everyone was against it, even though that’s not true according to the vote,” Zohayr said. Zohayr added that although some StuCo members thought flannel shirts should be considered professional because of Exeter’s cold climate, “last time I checked, flannels are not professional.”Some StuCo members believed that the dress code may have passed for reasons besides genuine agreement with the policy.“I honestly think most people voted to passed the dress code because they are tired of hearing about it. We all just want the final answer from the faculty,” StuCo member and upper Kaitlyn Tonra said.StuCo member and upper Tan Nazar agreed. “I’m excited about getting the proposal passed because we’ve all been working hard on it for the past couple of months. It should be interesting to see what the faculty think of it,” she said.StuCo will also be hosting a discussion based assembly this Friday focused on strategic planning and the new principal’s plan for her time at the school. StuCo hopes students will contribute to the conversation on how they want to preserve their Exeter experience, what they want to change about it and what they hope Principal MacFarlane knows and focuses on for coming years.StuCo plans to use this information to “identify the most glaring issues that we should address as a student body” so they can “work towards solving these issues as a team,” Lemmerman said.The assembly, moderated by Lemmerman and Cohen, will be similar to the assembly StuCo hosted earlier this year on goodness.Some StuCo members are concerned that students will be intimidated to speak up after their last assembly when the College Counseling Office (CCO) called a student in to talk after she mentioned a particular CCO policy. StuCo hopes to reassure students that they should not be intimidated to speak their minds. They also hope to make it clear that the purpose of the assembly is not to list negatives about the school. If there is negative feedback this time around, “we still want the assembly to be constructive,” Cohen said.The last part of the assembly will also serve as an update to what StuCo has been covering lately. This will include a live demo of a new dining hall app that allows students to provide direct feedback to dining hall staff by upvoting and downvoting specific meals offered at both dining halls, according to StuCo Secretary and upper Kevin Zhen.