On Saturday Dec. 5, Haverford’s president released his response to the Student Body Plenary Resolutions from Oct. 4.  The response was emailed to the student body around 9 p.m., nearly a month late, by Students’ Council Co-Presidents Will Harrison HC ’10 and Harrison Haas HC ’10.

Dr. President Stephen G. Emerson ‘74 accepted all six resolutions that the student body passed — but with their conditions on the resolution for a café in the apartments, Haverford students will have to pass another Plenary resolution before they see a Hannum Drive café.

The administration will support the resolution once “the authors…carefully canvas and survey the residents of HCA this winter,” and then “re-present this more detailed plan to Plenary in the spring,” Emerson said in his response, which he wrote after deliberating with the senior staff. He pointed out that construction cannot occur until the summer of 2010 anyway, and that  waiting until the next fiscal year would make it possible to pool the funds from both this year and next year for the project.

The senior staff said that their responses — due Nov. 7, a month after the formal presentation of Plenary resolutions by Students’ Council — were delayed because they were waiting to hear for more details from Harrison, who was the author of the café resolution. They were also slowed by a series of traumatic events, including the sexual assault of a student on Nov. 8, and the death of Greg Kannerstein, Special Advisor to Institutional Advancement, on Nov. 24.

Harrison conceded that while was late with the details, the administration still had three weeks between him giving them the information and them sending their response. He and Haas, as SC Co-Presidents, had also told the senior staff they could release their responses to the other resolutions first, and hold off on the HCA café.

Will Harrison said he was disappointed that it will take a second resolution to institute the café. He said the idea of a second one had not come up in his discussions with Emerson following Plenary, that he had thought the senior staff just wanted more surveying done.

Haas said in Sunday night’s Students’ Council meeting that conditional acceptance was essentially a rejection.

“I can’t figure out the difference,” he said, “because you need to go through the same process again.”

Emerson said in an email that with a second resolution, the margin of support from the student body might be higher than it was in the fall, “with a more detailed proposal that has been widely discussed with and vetted with the students at HCA ahead of time.”

Members of Students’ Council were concerned that Plenary might not be the best arena to deal with specifics in the plan.

Harrison said he did not think a second resolution was necessary, but that if the senior staff feels otherwise, it becomes necessary for him, since they are providing the financial support and permission for construction.

Jacob Waters HC ’10, a member of the Council of 12, suggested that the administration might accept the results from a committee instead of a second Plenary resolution. Students’ Council also discussed sending out a survey or holding community-wide discussions.

Emerson said in an email that if SC came up with an alternate plan, “unless the actual, detailed proposal presented major problems,” he would approve it.

Many students were happy the administration did not immediately approve the HCA café.

Annie Boggess HC ’12 pointed out that many people voted against the resolution, and it’s important to further examine the issue before the College invests money in it. Boggess voted against it because she did not want to further the divide between the apartments and the rest of campus.

HCA resident Elise Abken HC ’12 agreed.

“Building an HCA café would require quite a financial investment, so it makes sense that the administration would want to go forward with eyes wide open,” she said.

However, both Boggess and Abken thought plenary might not be the best arena for vetting the details. 

Emerson expressed concern in his letter that “previous efforts to establish café-type environments in HCA basements have failed to attract audiences.”

Will Harrison said that Emerson must be confused, because there haven’t been any attempts to establish a café in the apartments before. He said that perhaps Emerson was referring to the basement of Apartment 22, where attempts to turn the area into an improved lounge space failed to attract many students. Harrison would want the café designed to feel less like a basement by working with rugs, lighting, and wall space.

Harrison is worried that if the students are surveyed and if they want more food than was in the initial plan, the administration will reject the café completely as it would compete with the Coop, the college-run café in the Campus Center.

Still, he said, “I’m confident that something will come out of this, it’s just hard that we have to present another resolution.”

The other resolutions (all accepted) concerned revisions to the Alcohol Policy, expanding the Appointments Membership on the Council of Twelve, Haverford’s polling location, constitutional clarity, and sensitivity regarding religious holidays — with the condition that students alert their professor to their religious observance during the first two weeks of class.

Harrison said he hopes that despite this condition, professors now will automatically not schedule major assignments on Yom Kippur, so that students to not have to remember to ask. This was the initial intent of the resolution, before an unfriendly amendment modified it to say that professors should respect requests for extensions on any religious holidays.

For the resolution on the polling location — which expressed a desire to move Haverford’s polling location from Coopertown Elementary to somewhere on campus — Emerson said they “support this resolution completely, as in the past,” and they urge Students’ Council to work with the Dean’s Office to come up with a strategy before next fall.

Harrison said he appreciated the support, but wished the administration gave more direction in terms of action, such as working with elected officials.

Emerson said in an email that the administration has tried to do this in the past without organized student support. They hope that “by joining forces,” perhaps with a petition of all the student voters in Delaware County, “we can sway the local governmental authorities.”

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