Hi there,
I hope you are staying healthy and well. This has undoubtedly been a challenging semester, but the resilience of our community has impressed me day after day throughout this past year.
About 3 weeks ago, during our monthly Student Council Sunday meeting with our class presidents, vice presidents, and treasurers, our E-Board got the sense that the student body was up against a unique set of challenges this semester. We decided to send out a survey to gauge areas where both Student Council and Stern administration could offer additional support to students, both this semester and in preparation for the spring.
Thanks to you and your faith in our ability as students to improve our community, we collected an impressive 700 responses! We spent many late nights reading through your feedback and began to discuss our key findings with Stern professors to develop actionable steps to improve Stern’s academic experience and wellness climate in preparation for facing similar challenges in the spring semester.
Spencer, our student senator, has fully summarized our efforts in great detail (linked below), but, to offer a high level overview, here are a few of our top proposals driven by your responses:
1. Clear and well-communicated academic guidelines for both professors and students, available to all parties.
2. A Student Council partnership with the Stern Learning Sciences Lab to directly integrate student feedback into recommended best practices for professors.
3. Mental health provisions in course syllabi, designed to reduce stigma and confusion about how students and professors should handle mental health challenges.
4. Assignment-free three day weekends in the spring semester to give students adequate rest in lieu of spring break.
These are but a few of our suggested policy changes, and while it is important to note that not all of these may see fruition, we have had multiple meetings with Stern administrators (and have more scheduled in the coming weeks) and have felt largely supported in improving the student experience for the spring semester. As these conversations continue, we will provide additional updates on these policies and our other action items (again, please read Spencer’s letter for a full understanding of our advocacy work).
Finally, we know many of you were excited for the possibility of a Pass/Fail option this fall. While we too support this policy, it is decided at the university level -- not within Stern. We’ve shared our survey findings with the Student Government Assembly (SGA), and, while the P/F policy is highly unlikely to change, we will continue pushing SGA student leaders to advocate for a more flexible P/F at the university-wide level. As Stern StuCo, however, we’ve made the decision to look ahead to the spring and focus our efforts on more achievable goals that offer direct and tangible benefits to you, your academics, and our community.
If you have any questions or suggestions for us as a Student Council, please join our Slack server using the link at the bottom of this newsletter, and feel free to send me a direct message there.
Your support, resilience, and empathy continue to inspire and motivate us. We are immensely proud of this community, and will never stop working to make it a better place. This year has been incredibly challenging for many of us, but as student leaders, we work for you. When we face tall hurdles, we jump higher.
In solidarity,
Whitney Dankworth, Student Council President
On behalf of Stern Student Council
