Student Council Reveals Plans for 2023-2024 School Year

By ANNA BYUN, WILLIAM INOUE, LUCY JUNG, HEMANI STALLARD, and JADE YOO

On Sep. 12, the Student Council held its first meeting of the ‘23-’24 academic year. During the meeting, on behalf of the Student Council, President Kevin Treehan presented a list of goals that outlined the Student Council’s overall objectives for the coming year. Following the meeting, a document detailing these goals was sent out, elaborating on committee-specific objectives, such as reform to policies within the Community Conduct Committee (CCC) or free detergent tap for students. In addition to this initiative, a Student Council Canvas page was created to keep track of each committee’s progress. 

The Student Council Executive Board this year is composed of four members: President Kevin Treehan ‘24, Vice-President Will Soh ‘24, and co-Secretaries Emilia Kniestedt ‘24 and Caspar Bailey ‘25.

Treehan gave an overview of the direction the Student Council was heading this year. “The approach that we’re taking is a lot more initiative-driven than committee-driven, which means we’ve changed a lot of the ways we’re conducting meetings. Instead of having committee reports, we’re now focusing on presenting the progress of the individual projects that we’re working on.”

The Executive Board has since delegated varying tasks to different committees to implement such policies. Of those, the Policy Committee was tasked with ironing out the Vs, CCC, and revised dress code policies. Co-Head and lower Forrest Zeng explained, “Our goal over the next few weeks is to get closed for Vs for seniors from January onward, after their college applications are done. We are doing this on the precedent of Andover’s policy, which allows for a similar policy.” 

Zeng also noted the Policy Committee’s focus on implementing a grading feedback deadline policy, which has been in motion since the past spring. “Essentially, on major assignments such as tests or essays, teachers have to give you the assignment, fully graded, within two weeks. Through this, we want to create accountability between the students and teachers.” Zeng anticipates the policy to be implemented in the next few weeks, as the policy committee continues to progress on other initiatives such as CCC reform, self-medication for students, and closed-door visitations for seniors. 

Soh elaborated on the CCC reform initiatives: “We’re aiming to ensure mental health is a greater consideration in the CCC process, we hope to ensure that CAPS counselors are available upon request while cases are being heard and to ensure that mental health considerations are factored into the CCC decision.”

As for the dress code, Zeng explained, “We hope to have a clearer policy on dress code by the end of fall term. The faculty are having a meeting to discuss the dress code soon, and the Student Council will send a representative, Andrew Yuan, to represent the student’s opinions.”

Other committees, such as Student Life, are also aiming to pass new policies. When asked about the Student Life committee’s goals for this upcoming year, co-head and lower Kamilah Abilah noted their focus on “electric detergent taps.” Abilah explained, “This enables students to obtain free, green cleaning products anytime they require them. It has cut the use of potentially harmful chemical cleaners by 90% at Stanford, saving students money. So, we’re hoping the Exeter community can do the same.“ 

Abilah also mentioned the committee’s plan to simplify the process for dorm funding requests. “Student Life wishes to increase our dorm finances to have two rounds throughout the year rather than just one near the end of the year. As a result, dorms will find it much simpler to acquire what they want when they want.”

This change is also being spearheaded by the Treasury Committee. Co-head and senior Aavik Wadivkar explained, “While we’re using the same schema of dorm funds as last year, we will have a much tighter turnaround for fund processing. Instead of the process lasting months and over a term, we (along with StuLife and the Exec board) aim to have everything.” 

In the future, the Treasury Committee also hopes to increase transparency about the Student Council’s budget. “This year, we’d like to really push for participation in our internal budget requests (ie. requests that are handled by the committee and not the Student Council as a whole) as well as further advertising use of our budget. We have $40K - we’d like to use quite a bit of it this year!” Wadivkar concluded. 

Though the Mental Health Committee does not have concrete plans in place, co-head and senior Amber Zou shared that similar social wellness events, such as distributing boba and succulents, will be on the agenda. “We are hoping to promote relaxation and community building, and create a closer bridge of communication between CAPS, the administration, and the student body.”

For the Recreation Committee, revitalizing past campus life events is its top priority. “We’ve been trying to create some more events and bring back more life to campus, especially after the long period of time we couldn’t plan any events due to the pandemic,” co-head and upper Anna Holtz said. She continued, giving a rundown of the upcoming Rec events this term: “A recent success we’ve had is the Eversons, who came last weekend. We also have the neon dance [on September 30th] and another semiformal on November 4th. We also of course have E/A pep rallies and pep assembly…[but] we also want to create a wider variety of events for students, aside from dances.” 

Outside of the implementation of new school-wide policies, the Student Council also implemented changes to its internal operation. Notably, weekly Sunday committee meetings will no longer occur, now limited to weekly Tuesday meetings. Instead, the tasks originally delegated to committees on Sundays will be sent out via Slack, a messaging app designed for business organizations.