Student Council Outlines Goals and Plans For The 2024-2025 School Year

By SAM ALTMAN, LOGAN BECKERLE, LUKE CHON, AALIYAH SALVA and ARJUN VELAN

    Following elections last year, a new Exeter Student Council was chosen. With a new school year comes a new slate of issues to discuss among the student body, including potentially controversial changes to the dress code. The new executive board is shaping up to be a productive one with a variety of new policies, events, and reforms.

    Currently, the dress code is defined in the E-book as including a “Dress shirt, sweater, turtleneck, dress, [or] ethnic or religious attire,” while also stating that “All hemlines must be at least fingertip length, all clothing must be clean and in good repair, [and] no hats [or] athletic wear (e.g. sweatshirts, T-shirts), strapless tops or tops with straps less than two inches wide, or apparel that reveals the midriff, buttocks or chest.” Last year, the Student Council worked to reform this policy, as many students found the latter half of the restrictions to be excessively strict. With there being an ongoing debate about the dress code on campus, the Student Council plans to work on change this year.

    “We’re having Policy Committee do a lot of the groundwork for the dress code,” co-secretary Kyle Kennedy’s explained. “They’ve been meeting with the dress code committee externally, and as of now, they have a few different proposals that faculty are going to get the chance to vote on. And, in the coming student council meeting, we’re going to have Dean Taylor listen in and have a conversation with the students about the current proposal.”

    Policy Committee cohead Harry Clark said, “We have met with deans and faculty to discuss a new dress code policy that reflects the student body’s changing mindset towards attire in class, and we will be finished with that soon.”

“We want to be a lot more student-centered in our approach to dress code,” said policy committee co-head Dylan B. Richardson. “Last year, the faculty committee did a lot more of the driving than the students, but now that we’ve actually sent something out to the students at the most recent council meeting—our nearly finalized proposal that the faculty will vote on in the winter, unless objection from the student body arises.”

    “This will be a significant revision no matter how you look at it,” Richardson continued. “Because the fact of the matter is, what’s written in the E Book and what’s enforced and practiced on this campus is simply different. We’re looking to strike a balance between the two. We want something that follows the common sense guidelines a dress code ought to have, while still being one that students can be happy with. One of the major issues students had last year, with Dean Weatherspoon’s proposal, was that the dress code brought forth was simply not something most students would be comfortable fitting into right now: hoodies, sweatpants, and T-shirts were all out.”

    Additionally, there has been conversation about reforming CVP to be more in conformity with its mission. “We’re trying to holistically look at the amount of required appointments students have,” Kennedy’s explained. “In terms of CVP, we feel like there has become a bit of a disconnect where there are high-achieving CVPs that are very rooted in their mission and are active, and then there are CVPs where you just sleep, and at that point, it feels like CVP has sort of lost its mission.”

    Co-secretary Lauren Lee agreed, “I think the general sentiment around CVP is that it has a good moral intention, but the way in which it goes about accomplishing its mission is just completely against what StuCo wants. It’s another thing to check off. It’s another burden on our calendars. We just want to make sure that this mission is achieved in a more effective way, and so we are currently looking to work with Dean Taylor, Principal Rawson, and Dr. Bramlett.”

    METICs and PIEs are also under scrutiny this year. “The way teachers conduct METICs varies drastically from class to class, and one piece of feedback we have consistently received from students is that they want this process to be more standardized,” Clark said.

    Richardson expanded on that, saying, “We’re looking at the system for both METICs and PIEs to see what improvements both faculty and students would like to be made. Especially for the PIEs, a lot of people feel that the anonymous nature of the PIEs can lead to students just being disrespectful to their teachers rather than providing constructive feedback. There were also some talks about possibly bringing in one or two sentence midterm comments as a part of that, but nothing is confirmed yet.”

    “There are also some more minor initiatives that the Policy Committee is working on, like making the Parent Portal more accessible by adding language translations, and increasing awareness for international student accommodations such as opportunities to go to the health center if jetlagged,” Clark added.

    Last year, there was a massive movement for Visitations (“Vs”) reform, loosening the restrictions on students visiting the rooms of other students in other dorms. This year, however, the council plans to take a different path.“Vs was the main initiative of Student Council last year. To my knowledge, from Jan. 1, 2025, seniors will be allowed to have them with a door stop. And I believe the door stops would be provided by Student Council, just to make things easy and cost-efficient,” Kennedy’s mentioned.

    “We’re satisfied with Vs at the moment,” Lee said. “One of the things that we were concerned about the way the executive board did things last year is that they were too laser-focused on one issue. And then as a result of that, a lot of other facets of student life were sorely ignored. So we’re trying to take a very different approach to that.”

    The executive board and various committees are also planning many recreational activities for the student body.

    “We’re going to have the GLO dance, for one, which at this point will have already happened,” Recreation Committee cohead Andrew Gould said. “We’re also going to have another dance toward the end of the term, which will probably be more semi-formal, and we can’t commit to anything in the winter yet, because we do have Casino Night, which is kind of our formal event for the winter, but we’ll definitely still have a spring formal. Our big concept this year is to have themes for dances and to give students a large period of time to know about those themes, let it build up, and really hype up the dance. Another big thing was to focus on the music and really get into it. So we had a pre-prepared list going into it.”

    Gould continued, “Oftentimes, dances at Exeter have the perception of being lame. And, of course, we can only do so much to mitigate that, but putting in effort into planning those events goes a long way.”

    Another major initiative is to further connect individual dorms in school activities. “We’re trying to have a variety of events,” Kennedy’s said. “The overall goal is to improve dorm culture by implementing dorm wars, like something out of Harry Potter.”

    “We’re really focusing on reviving a lot of the school culture, particularly on dorm culture and rivalries,” Gould said. “So, in the spring we had dorm dodgeball, which was a big success. We want to continue with that dorm wars idea, and so we’re going to have a few different events, like capture the flag, trivia nights, and other physical activities and events, with a few different scoring systems, in which dorms can compete against each other for a prize at the end of the year.”

    Gould continued, “The way it’s going to work is that each individual tournament will be worth different points that progressively build up over the year. Maybe the Capture the Flag is worth 500 points, the Winter Trivia event is worth roughly 750, and then Dorm Dodgeball is worth 1000, for example. The point is to make sure you don’t have an early runaway victor, and we’re also trying to reach out to smaller houses so that they have shot, too.”

    “I think around Halloween we were planning to do a sort of dorm trick-or-treat—maybe to see what form could get the most people to get their treats, for example, or a dorm costume contest,” Kennedy’s added.

    Finally, Lee mentioned that progress is being made on the return of food trucks. “The executive board is looking to Ms. Lembo and Student Activities to get some food trucks subsidized, so we can have them more frequently throughout the school year. If we have to pay for them straight out of our budget, it will be a lot more difficult,” she explained.

    Food trucks, dorm events, dances, PIE/METIC reform, and dress code specifications — there is no doubt our Student Council will be busy this year, but students should be excited for the improvements coming to campus.

    “I’m a three-year member of Student Council, and I’ve been here under three different boards,” Lee said. “I can safely say that the current executive board is doing the best we can to ensure all voices are heard. It’s not just Cam going off on some long ramble. Instead, we’re always looking to get a diverse set of views from the representatives and other students that come to StuCo meetings.”

    Kennedy’s concluded with some shoutouts to various StuCo initiatives. “You should look out for E/a stuff from Student Council,” he said. “We have a fun surprise plan for our psych packs. We’re trying to give out to students some E/a pennants. We need designers for that, so if you’re interested, reach out to Student Council. Finally, look out for the Student Council assembly on Oct. 8—it’ll be a fun one that is very different from the years past.”