Ryan Lam and Eleanor (Nor) DeHoog, the 2023-2024 Student Body Co-Presidents, in coalition with the Co-Presidents of Justice Café, which includes Laerdon Kim as well as DeHoog, launched the inaugural Community Committee meeting. Hosted on October 17, at 7:30 a.m., the gathering brought together Student Council representatives and a diverse assembly of club leaders, with a turnout of 50 percent of those invited.
As a cornerstone of the Co-Presidents’ 2023-2024 agenda, Community Committee hopes to provide a platform for student organizations to convene and advocate for institutional transformation. In talking about the origin of the initiative, DeHoog, who had worked as a Student Council member for all four years, spoke of a need for better representation of the student body’s opinions.
“One of the things that we noticed was that there was really no way to gauge a general consensus of the student body’s opinions on any one topic. While the Student Council is technically supposed to be a representative body of the entire student body, there’s no guarantee that there’s going to be equal representation of a wide variety of students… That was our first idea, to get all of the leaders, all of the influential people on Andover’s campus in one room together to be able to talk about and collaborate on certain ideas,” said DeHoog.
Spearheaded in collaboration with Justice Cafe, the club was initially founded by Mary Muromcew, the 2021-2022 Student Body Co-President, and Tristan Fain ’22. Kim, the current Co-President of Justice Café, described the origins of the club and its relationship with the Student Council in working with the Community Committee.
“Because Justice Café came right around a lot of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the administration and faculty recognized an urgent and immediate need for some way for the student body to organize around change in campus to better fit the issues of the present. I think it’s with that mindset of collaboration between the Justice Café and the Student Council… [that we will] use connections to essentially build up a better understanding of the different circles that are on campus. [Also, in] ensuring that each of those diverse circles, from different corners of the school, have a voice in making sure that long term change occurs over time, [then] we can effectively create some meaningful difference,” said Kim.
Lam recognized the administration’s willingness to support the student community. Simultaneously, he emphasized the importance of students bringing forth ideas and issues as a way to implement change and expressed his hope that the Community Committee will be a resource for students of different backgrounds to do so.
“The administration is amazing because they’re always looking for ways to support the student body. But they’re only going to do so if…they see that a lot of students are backing change. They need to see many voices that are supporting something that, for example, Nor and I or some other clubs bring up to them. Hopefully, this is how the administration can see a large variety of students coming forth for one idea,” said Lam.
Jess Li, Co-President of Abbot Cluster and representative for International Club (iClub) and the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA), commented on the difficulty to bring about change on campus. However, they also shared their hope for Community Committee as an outlet to fulfill realistic achievements.
“Something I’m thinking about is how I feel ambitious goals are really common on this campus and unfortunately they don’t always come to fruition. I think if the Community Committee were really able to accomplish anything that it set out to do, with reasonable goals, I would be excited. Because I think [Community Committee’s] goal is to push for more change in an avenue that hasn’t really been explored before…being able to accomplish any of them would be a nice achievement to see and restore some faith,” said Li.
Representing the Phillips Academy Sustainability Coalition (PASC), Ella Kowal expects the Community Committee to act as a powerful forum to campaign to the administration and as a channel that will react swiftly to certain changes and decisions.
“This was the first time we had a group that represented a bunch of different students’ interests, not just the ones who typically run for Student Council, which I thought was really important to have… My hope is not just that the Community Committee can enact long term change, but also focus more on short term goals based off of what we need to address in our community or the larger world. [I hope this will be] a group that can react really quickly to things and make sure that the administration is appropriately handling them in the eyes of the students,” said Kowal.
Georgianna Harpole, representative for the Intersectional Feminist Forum, originally questioned the role of a Student Council, but remarked on the novelty of the idea of a Community Committee. Harpole also described her admiration for the cohesive ability of the Community Committee in bringing the student body together.
“I thought, ‘I’ve never seen a Student Council really get this entrenched in the student body before.’ My takeaway was just that this is what student administration should be doing and this is a really responsible, involved way to make use of that position. It really emphasizes that connection, the point of Student Council is to be the bridge between students and adults, specifically administration,” said Harpole.
