Student Council Check-Up

By: Selim Kim and Andrew Yuan

Student Council (StuCo) reflected on their progress pursuing goals and commitments during the first two months of their tenure, with the 2020-21 school year ending soon on June 3. Student Council has informed on its efforts to reform the Visitations policy, remove the intradorm relationship ban, implement an N-word ban in the History Department and form a focus group to revise the Student Council Constitution, among others.

Upper and Student Council President Siona Jain described the Executive Board’s plans to maintain accountability. “At the beginning of our turnover, on April 13th, the Executive Board and I were very clear to make a compiled list of our long term goals for the year and short term goals for spring term. We shared this continually updated Doc with all of Council and the entire school,” Jain said.

Jain detailed the progress that Student Council has made since the appointment of the new Board. “So far, we have expanded our dorm delivery options, brought back a version of Tuesday EP, organized pep rally and pep assembly, assembled all of our committees, made progress in a N-word ban policy in the History Department, begun Vs [visitations] conversations among the Deans with our finished proposals, met with Principal Rawson on our school’s mental health, made progress in setting up an anti-racism online suggestion box, started conversations on free laundry in dorms for next year, and held discussions about the schedule for fall term,” Jain said.

Upper and Student Council Vice President Georgie Venci outlined event-based goals Student Council has accomplished. “We've been focusing on short term plans right now, mental health especially. We've done Grill Cookies, pep assemblies, pep rally and the Spring Fling,” Venci said.

Upper and Co-Secretary Kiesse Nanor shared additional plans that the Council has recorded. “Of our long-term projects, we've been able to start work on a constitutional focus group designed to analyze our current constitution and begun speaking to department heads about more diverse curricula and explicit statements about their policies on the use of racial slurs,” Nanor said.

Nanor explained the Executive Board’s operational procedures. “We have a set schedule of projects that we're prioritizing, and we keep in good communication about the steps that each of us are individually taking towards accomplishing our set tasks. Much of our work is based in communication with each other, the Student Council advisors, and the adults associated with our projects,” Nanor said.

Jain added, “Given the end of the year, a lot of our work will continue over the summer. However, we plan to continue roping in students and student committees. Last year, it felt like a lot of our work was conducted purely by Executive Board. I think the lack of tasks for other members like dorm reps often creates a lack of interest in StuCo work. I’ve been really focused on having members take on work this year.”

The Executive Board has added monetary compensation of student leaders in the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) to its list of priorities, a topic that was highly discussed during the elections.

“We have not met this year with OMA leaders,” Jain said. “We decided to wait until after [OMA leadership] turnovers, which just completed this past week. We have since discussed with Principal Rawson and our advisors, both of whom support the idea, and we will be further discussing with Council this Tuesday night.”

Changes to the Academy’s Visitations policy remain one priority among Student Council’s goals.

“Dorm heads pushed us to the deans, so we’ve been in back and forth with Dean Moriarty,” Jain said. “We’ve also roped in Mr. Weatherspoon, who will be Dean of Students next year. We’re waiting to hear back from them right now, but we’ve also spoken with Principal Rawson… We’re currently in the process of reaching out to EASA [Exonians Against Sexual Assault] to involve them as well.”

Upper and Co-Secretary Kiesse Nanor elaborated on Student Council’s plans for continuing discourse about a new Visitations policy. “The Deans are currently committed to making sure that end-of-year procedures run smoothly, and so the larger, in depth Visitations conversation has been pushed to the summer for the time being,” Nanor said. “However, we're committed to working over the summer in conjunction with the deans and dorm heads to ensure that Visitations are safe and inclusive for all students, hopefully by the fall term.”

Jain also mentioned efforts to remove the Academy’s intradorm relationship ban. “We’re unsure of that yet. They [administrators] have not reached out with any major objections against the removal of the ban,” Jain said. “We’ll see how the conversations progress, but more anything, that’s one of our biggest priorities in next year’s policy.”

Venci mentioned long-term policy changes Student Council hopes to implement. “We are also working with Principal Rawson to design anti-racist discussions next year, and maybe make that a permanent part of Exeter curriculum and also with administrative policies like inter-dorm relationships. We're just trying to make it to the end of this year and see how much we can get done,” Venci said.

Jain shared Student Council’s progress on implementing an N-word ban in the History Department. “We’ve been in conversation with [English Instructor] Dr. Marshall, faculty and students. We will update more as we hear more and are able to hold a synchronous meeting with everyone involved,” Jain said.

Nanor added, “Dr. Marshall has been working to speak with faculty members in the history department to discuss steps that have already been taken in this regard. In terms of continuing to diversify the general Exeter curriculum, we plan to continue conversations with department heads and various teachers.”

The recent approval of additional dorm delivery services, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats, was one of the shorter-term goals of Student Council. After a Student Council meeting in late April, the Executive Board communicated this proposal to the deans.

Nanor explained, “I reached out to Dean Moriarty and Dean Griffith expressing some of our concerns with the TakeOut Guys delivery service that had been available to students. Dean Moriarty was quick to respond and eager to hear our thoughts, and we were able to communicate some of the difficulties that students faced when ordering food,” Nanor said.

Lower and Co-secretary Aaron Joy elaborated on the motivation for additional delivery options. “DoorDash and Uber Eats, from a COVID standpoint, are essentially the same as Takeout Guys. And if we have these two deliveries approved, students are allowed to choose from the better service. That’s the message we were able to communicate to the deans. Students have been complaining about the delivery option and within three weeks, we realized that problem and were able to solve that problem,” Joy said.

Before the new board’s tenure, Student Council had announced plans to form a committee that would rework and improve the Student Council Constitution. Led by senior and former Elections Committee co-head Charlie Preston, the committee has been formed and is working with the Public Relations (PR) Committee to publicize changes to the Constitution.

Venci shared updates on the status of the committee. “We have all the names of the students interested in the forum. Charlie's gonna have one or two meetings for the end of the term, and then he's going to maybe pass it onto a lowerclassman in the people on the committee… For the most part, we are trying to say that this came from the students, and when it passes, I think there's certainly parts where [Exec] can offer input but we're not leading the charge on that,” Venci said.

Nanor shared the committee’s future goals. “We've been able to collect a good number of students interested in the focus group, and the group should begin work before the end of the term. Our plan is to have the focus group keep in close communication with Exec Board, and periodically give updates to the larger Student Council about their progress,” Nanor said.

Jain said, “we’re likely going to continue this long term conversation next year.”

Lower and Elections Committee co-head Tucker Gibbs expressed excitement about working with the Constitutional Focus Group. “We will probably look into more constitutional changes after the focus group has been formed and we are trying to get involved,” Gibbs said. “We want to find and implement ways that we can improve StuCo elections, with anyone who is interested in joining us.”

Student Council committees also shared their plans to improve student wellbeing for the rest of the term and upcoming school year.

Lower and Recreation Committee co-head Ale Murat shared the Recreation Committee’s hopes for the last three weeks of school, which were formed in collaboration with the Executive Board. “We have a pep rally, and then we're gonna push for a dodgeball game at the end of the year. [The students] seem to enjoy having such huge competitions,” Murat said. “For next year, we're planning an inta-dorm competition. Every single candidate who runs for Exec always talks about Exeter Olympics and now we finally have a structure and a plan that we want to do.”

Murat also explained that they hoped to implement spirit weeks more similar events for next year “to take advantage of the fact that people will be vaccinated.”

“I know pep rally and all that stuff is gonna happen next year, but we're going to be adding more to it. We are hopefully planning out a dance like a homecoming dance or something like that. Just more events where people can socialize and have fun,” Murat said.

Student Life committee heads (which recently combined with D-Hall committee) shared their plans. Prep and D-Hall Committee co-head Colin Maloney said, “For the end of this year, we've already started working on getting renewable utensils for D-hall. Dining hall has said that they're going to have completely renewable utensils very soon once they use up the current batch of plastic utensils, and then they're going to switch over to compostable utensils. We're also planning to try to get the ice cream machines up and running. So hopefully that will happen very soon and we hope to make that happen before the school year is out.”

For the upcoming school year, Student Life committee also plans to bring kayaks for use on the Exeter River. According to lower and Student Life Committee co-head Grace Puchalski, this proposed plan has not yet been approved. “The kayak would require executive approval or at least [approval] from the Budget Committee. They’d be the one who would fund that from us and we have not met with them yet,” Pulchalski said.

As Student Council implements their event-based plans, the PR Committee hopes to promote these initiatives on the Student Council Instagram. “Our baseline is just to post every week,” upper and PR Committee co-head Zara Ahmed said. “We are trying to focus a lot more on working with other committees in order to get an agenda on what they plan to do and what they've accomplished. That way we can spread awareness of what PR is doing and what StuCo is doing because there's definitely the notion that StuCo doesn't do anything, which I think is completely unwarranted.”

“We're just trying to have committee updates more often,” Ahmed continued. “Now that we have new co-heads, I want to pick that up a lot more, and move forward to have it more regularly based, so it's not just like when they do something amazing. There's work in progress at all points, and I think highlighting that will help StuCo get a better reputation, and also just give credit where credit is due.”

Upper and Mental Health Committee co-head Maxine Park hopes to further the committee’s work supporting students. “We were involved in the conversation to build a director for institutional research through interviewing candidates,” Park said. “I think that mental health is obviously aimed at real people and real relationships, but it’s also about a system that can help us see where we are from an empirical standpoint on how we can fix or build these relationships, and so now we’re doing more qualitative research with interviewing students.”

“We are hoping to expand more institutional research by looking at the mental health states of certain groups of people, possibly through grades, to gain more information of where we are right now with our mental health. I think that’s the one thing that comes to my mind when transparency is mentioned,” Park continued.

One of the Budget Committee’s priorities is forming internal and external subcommittees, responsible for outreach and organizing Student Council, respectively. Lower and Budget Committee head Val Whitten explained their vision for these smaller groups. “The short term goal is to create a more defined subcommittee of students who want to work on efforts that go into budget proposals, not just looking at it and given opinions as we did in past years, but emailing, organizing and auditing all of this for the Student Council,” Whitten said.

After committee turnovers, the Elections Committee conducted three dorm representative elections: Cilley Hall, and the replacement elections in Langdell Hall and Ewald Dormitory. In the future, the committee aims to increase election turnout. “We want to find and implement ways that we can improve StuCo elections, with anyone who is interested in joining us,” Gibbs said. “This is the main goal of the committee this year.”

Committees are also hoping to draft new policies with student wellbeing in mind. “I feel like the main goal right now is to just make people happy, and sort of break away a little bit of their stress level. We've been here for 14 weeks and for me personally, I just love going to these events to take care of your mental health and for a little bit, you're not just a student working all the time,” Murat said. “We want students to realize that they do have a support system and a student council that cares about them.”

Maloney shared similar thoughts. “We are trying to implement what the community wants. So we just try to ask around where we can, and just hear what people would like, and also think about its environmental impact and how we can be considerate of the Earth at the same time,” Maloney said.

With only a few weeks left of the 2020-2021 academic year, Jain looked forward to Student Council continuing in the fall. “I’m excited to see what a full in-person council can do!” Jain said.