Student Council Reviews Plans for the School Year
Although Student Council (StuCo) has been deliberating on various new policy ideas for the upcoming school year, many have yet to come to fruition even as the Council Board approaches the halfway point of its tenure.
Proposals at hand include revisions of the day student driving policy, an option for new lowers to have a pass/fail term in their lower fall and the implementation of mental health days.
[Pepper] added that “Student Council has taken on a lot of projects over the years, but not many of them have been all that productive. They have started projects like the Visitations Policy and Day Student Driving, but we have yet to see those changes in the E Book.”
The proposed day student driving policy is “in its final form,” Student Council President senior Elizabeth Yang said. If passed, this policy would allow upperclassmen day students to drive boarding students. Currently, the E Book states that day students under 18 years old are prohibited from driving boarding students.
According to Yang, the Executive Board is looking to collect feedback from day student parents by working closely with the day student representatives. “Before reaching the faculty, we are looking for concrete data that mirrors many day students’ claims that their parents would be okay with them driving boarding students,” she said.
The second of major policy proposals, the pass/fail term for new lowers, also requires faculty approval. If passed, new lowers would be able to opt for a pass/fail term. Such a change in academic expectations will need to run through the College Counseling Office. Mark Blekherman, a co-head of the StuCo Policy Committee, said the finalization is underway and the committee’s next step would be to see “how this option might affect how colleges look at a new lower’s transcript.”
Another significant proposal on the table is to implement mental health days. According to Blekherman, a student taking a mental health day “would have the opportunity to speak with a counselor in the health center and recoup when they need it most.”
Senior Jeremy Xu, another co-head of the Policy Committee, added that StuCo “wants to destigmatize mental health and provide the infrastructure for kids to be able to take a day to recollect themselves for whatever mental health reasons.”
Like most other policies on the table, however, the policy will require significant work to implement. The committee must figure out how the policy affects students with major assignments, for one. Xu said the committee’s next steps will be to conduct research and collect feedback among relevant community members like “students, the faculty and the health center.”
Some students, however, question the efficacy of such ambitious proposals. Upper Pepper Pieroni, who is a part of the Elections Committee, suggested that the council “focus on smaller and more realistic projects rather than administrative ones.” He added that “Student Council has taken on a lot of projects over the years, but not many of them have been all that productive. They have started projects like the Visitations Policy and Day Student Driving, but we have yet to see those changes in the E Book.”
The Executive Board and Policy Committee have also been looking at bringing standardized testing to campus. Yang mentioned that this proposal “gained a lot of support at the last meeting.” Though Blekherman described this policy idea as a “priority,” it has yet to be developed.
Generally speaking, the Council is exploring new ways to help the community. “Currently, Student Council is really open to policy ideas that students may have because we are in the process of focusing in on one or a few major policy proposals that we would like to pursue in the next two terms,” Yang said. StuCo Co-Secretary upper Ayush Noori added, “We are continually searching for new ideas and issues that face the student body that we can tackle.”