Minutes 11.9.16/Agenda 11.16.16

Post date: Nov 15, 2016 4:11:03 PM

Agenda 11.16.16

• 1. Approval of Minutes

  2. Reports

  3. Community Service Survey Results

  4. Religious Holidays Motions

  5. Notes and New Business

Council Minutes 11.9.16

“Our similarities bring us to a common ground; our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.” -Tom Robbins

• 1. Approval of Minutes

  2. Reports

     • Mod: Stevens High School approved a condom distribution program based on the Hanover setup so thanks to the people who helped them out. I met with Dr. Gamble who gave us some ideas for the mental health discussion. The discussion last week was great but this week let's try to focus away from the Facebook discussions.

     • A-Mod: Please be civil and respectful when discussing national politics

     • Secretary: Senior alternate can vote

     • Curric: Worked on the Religious Holidays motion

     • SL: Worked as a focus group for the superintendent search

     • SAC: Discussed Winter Carnival plans

     • Nick Beard: Had a submission with a graphic involving Chinese characters that we had to translate but we approved it and it will be hung up later this week.

     • Service Ad Hoc: Drafted a survey to be released to students and staff to address interest, participate, and barrier to service at the high school

     • Inclusivity Ad Hoc: Discussed plan for committee and areas that could be looked at

  3. Mental Health Discussion

     • A fine line between a discussion to make people more respectful and legislation to moderate free speech

     • Different people experience stress in different ways

     • In the competitive nature of Hanover High people have to learn that they don’t have to do everything

     • The resources we have available for students such as peer counseling so people know there are adults or people in the building they can go to

     • “I move to temporarily adjourn the meeting to watch Hillary Clinton’s concession speech when it starts”

       • We can watch this later online and we can’t meet as a group later to discuss these important topics

       • This is a historical moment and as a democratic body it is important to watch

       • For many of us, this is the first election we will really experience and by the next election many of us will be able to vote so this is important to watch

       • Motion Passes

     • We are at a place nationally where people don’t have much empathy and that’s what we should be teaching people, rather than saying you can’t say this or that

     • The P.E. classes were made aware about certain terms and phrases that were used throughout the school last week

     • For certain students who have struggled with depression, joking around about phrases like “just kill yourself” when others know you are joking can help them

     • A lot of people didn’t take the events on Facebook seriously in common ground

     • Now pivot the discussion to talking about a mental health day form like a golden rod

     • Sometimes taking a mental health day and just relaxing or sleeping in can make a huge difference and this form would reduce the pressure on parents to lie about a student being sick

     • Patterns could develop where certain students who take a large numbers of personal days which might jeopardize it for students who only need one or two

     • It could be people get one once a semester or once a year

     • This would allow you to go to extracurricular activities like a golden rod does

     • The fact that for this form you would plan ahead for a mental health day seems odd as those days tend to be more spontaneous

     • If students are very stressed it doesn’t seem that going to extracurriculars is the best idea

     • It should be possible for students to take time off on a smaller scale like a period or two

     • A mental health day isn’t something that is planned a day in advance and if there is a night that you can’t get your homework done or you're skipping an extracurricular to get work done and your teacher doesn’t understand then there is not enough communication

     • This creates an avenue for people to abuse the system in the culture that is set up

     • This accomplishes two things of gathering information for the office on the prevalence of mental health ideas and forcing students and teachers to have a conversation about stress

     • Teachers have a good understanding of when students are stressed and it is the same time teachers are most stressed and teachers have to make sacrifices because of responsibilities and students also should because learning how to manage stress is important

     • Circleup is working on this problem and we would love to have student input

     • This is towards kids that are actually struggling, not the kids who just want a day off and there will always be kids who take advantage of rules but it is important to help those kids who need it

     • If you are always overburden by stress you probably need to sacrifice one of the things in your life

     • Taking a personal day doesn’t eliminate stress, just suspends it

  4. Meeting Adjourned