Minutes 12.7.16/Agenda 12.7.16

Post date: Dec 14, 2016 12:16:37 AM

Agenda 12.14.16

• 1. Approval of Minutes

  2. Reports

  3. Shadowing Discussion

  4. Service on Transcript Discussion

  5. Notes and New Business

Council Minutes 12.7.16

“The best revenge is massive success.” -Frank Sinatra

• 1. Approval of Minutes

  2. Reports

     • Mod: Thanks to the Broadside for their coverage of Council, they have a great article on the Religious Holidays Motion this week

     • Treasurer: Council Fund: $5,816.04, Co-Curricular Fund: $5,013

     • Secretary: No alternates can vote

     • Curric:  Clarifying points for Religious Holidays Motion

     • SAC: Finalized the activities and scoring for Winter Carnival

     • Admin: Discussed MLK and the speaker

     • Inclusivity: worked on something for the first day of classes to comply with wording about name tags for pronoun preferences and an educational component to that

  3. JCOM Effective Date Bylaw Revision

“I move to insert the following into Article VII.F.2, ‘Effective date of consequences​. We advise that once J-Comm meets and decides to hear a particular case, all consequences should be suspended. Before that point, however, it is at the discretion of a Dean to decide which consequences, if any, go immediately into effect.””

• • • An appeal happens within 24 hours and then likely within 24 hours of an appeal JCOM holds a preliminary hearing on whether they are going to hear the case and if JCOM decides to hear the case then it is likely 24 hours before a hearing is held and this motion is clarifying what happens during those times

    • If JCOM is saying they are going to hear the case there is doubt about those consequences and so they should not go into effect until the hearing is completed

    • It makes sense to the Administration

    • We had a situation where a student was already halfway done with a schedule up that was later overturned

    • The ambiguity of the wording prevents someone from appealing the case so they could perform in the final night of a play or avoid a consequence that could only occur at a specific time

    • Motion Passes (Handcount, 39 aye, 0 nay, 0 abstentions)

• • Religious Holidays Motion

    • We are a secular institution and this would be teachers going out of their way to accommodate religion, which could be a slippery slope with preferential treatment towards students’ religions

    • We are not catering to specific religions but addressing the areas that have been brought up as problems

    • If we are a secular institution our holiday breaks should not be tied to certain Christian holidays and since we are not truly a secular institution we should make other accommodations

    • Students are forced to work harder to practice their religion

    • We should look at creating a more robust goldenrod program rather than changing the system for this case because the problem needs to be addressed and students and staff are comfortable with the goldenrods

    • Other holidays have been brought up and not added to the list

    • Educators are compassionate and we want to allow you to celebrate important things in your lives

    • Where do we draw the line as to what qualifies as a religious holiday, even if it works on a basis of the classes that an individual student is in

    • The wording about Ramadan seems out of place

    • There are many reasons that students might have to spend an entire day doing something other than homework

    • The point of this motion is to remove the catch up that religious students are forced to do and the goldenrod just pushes that back and it isn’t the solution to this problem

    • “I move to strike the sentence, “In the case of an extended holiday such as Ramadan, students are encouraged to talk to their teachers far in advance to make amenable arrangements.”’

      • It was discussed in Curric and decided that this doesn’t make sense and the goal of this sentence is already included in the intention of this motion

      • Amendment Passes

    • Targeting only a few religions does not help the problem of a calendar limited to specific religions

    • This is a foot in the door and even though it doesn’t include all the holidays we might want it is a good first step

    • Passing this motion without it being inclusive makes it seems as if other holidays are less important

    • Teachers don’t always understand what is involved for students to celebrate their holidays and some of that information could be put on the back of goldenrods

    • Motion Fails

  • Shadowing Discussion

    • A staff member suggested a motion requiring that all Council members do a day long shadow of another student at an Upper Valley high school to give them perspective and maybe some new ideas from other schools

    • It would be cool if we could extend it to schools outside the Upper Valley

    • A requirement that all Council members must do it might create problems so it might make sense to put this as a duty of PR to set it up every year for as many Council members as possible so it is enshrined in the bylaws

    • There is no single behavior that a Council member must do to be effective but we should encourage students to do this

    • This could be a valuable for everyone in the school so it shouldn’t be limited to Council

    • A lot of people have been in the Dresden system since elementary school so it could provide great perspective

    • It makes sense to have the organization in Council but it should be open to other students

    • This wouldn’t exclude other students from doing it and anyone could go shadow now so we shouldn’t focus on the rest of the school but on Council experiences

    • Shadowing is just a day experience and doesn’t tell you much about the institutions of the school or the culture or background of the school, it is just a day in the life and a debriefing might be more effective

  • Meeting Adjourned