This week ESC’s general body meeting discussed the limits to what ESC can change while looking ahead to future initiatives.

The meeting began with an open discussion of the proposed amendment to add the SEAS Peer Mentorship Program to ESC’s constitution. The amendment, first brought before the entire council at last week’s general body meeting, would put the program under the jurisdiction of ESC’s communications committee.

This week’s discussion of the amendment revolved around edits made since last week’s meeting. Since council members had expressed interest in involving the Professional Development Representative in the program, the proposal was amended to include this position. 

Several council members raised questions about whether this initiative would fall under the Professional Development Representative’s responsibilities as outlined in the ESC bylaws. Student Body President Estevan Mesa (‘22) reviewed the laws during the meeting and concluded that the position description is rather loose and may include this role. 

Another change made to the amendment since last week is that the details of the Peer Mentorship Program are now in a footnote rather than in the body of the text. ESC’s communications committee will continue to review the amendment before the council votes on whether to entertain it at next week’s general body meeting.

After this discussion concluded, committee members provided updates from their recent meetings. Mesa and VP Finance Sophia Sagandyk (‘21) met to discuss the feasibility of turning this year’s COVID-19 Resource Fund into a long term resource fund beyond the pandemic. Questions they rose included how to determine which needs students would continue to have once they were living back on campus and where the funding for this initiative would come from.

Mesa also noted that it is unlikely that SEAS’ 40 credit limit for this year’s three semesters would change. With this being the case, Mesa wondered whether it might be possible to work with the college to create a way for students who are a few credits under the limit and do not have other summer opportunities to subsidize the additional few credits to take a 3 or 4 credit summer course. This may be difficult to achieve given the high cost of a credit of summer coursework.

 During the class councils’ updates, Class of 2023 President Angel Mancera noted that students are concerned about the current quarantine situation in Furnald. Students have reported that students who may be COVID negative but are quarantining due to COVID exposure are quarantined in Furnald along with students who have tested positive for COVID. Some people feel this is unideal and unsafe for the COVID negative students who are quarantining.

Other updates included a postponement of a cocktail night for juniors, a pi day pie making contest, and an ESC-hosted game night this Friday.

Lerner via Bwog Archives