UWCM Student Council

In order to address the issue of transparency, we are glad to present the Student Council Open Sessions.
This new proposal represents the possibility for every DP student to assist to some of the meetings of the Student Council and be informed on what is going on with our ideas and projects.

The first Open Session will be this Tuesday the 18th, from 17.00 to 18.30 in C201.

We hope to see you and we hope to transform the Student Council in the most transparent of the platform for students.

Update from Hannah:
- More than 50 students signed up already for the Dinner with Teachers, if you still want to sign up, do it here: https://goo.gl/forms/cVMku8nIC4c7ZNO52
- Tian send out the consequences sheet, please have a look at it. If you have any comments regarding the document, don't hesitate to email her.
- I had a meeting with some floor reps. to talk about floor-come-togethers, student health, problems on the floor and the relation with the RM. Soon we will have a meeting with all the floor reps to discuss this further.
- Tian and I are still working on the gender neutral bathrooms, but they won't be there before the beginning of next year.

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Update from Hannah’s meeting with Tian today:

- Next year there will probably be a doctor on campus for a few days a week. Tian will inform all the residentials more about this next residential meeting.

- Residential student who believe that they will be sick for several days, due to a flu for example, can stay in bed and email Zakiya in the morning. Just ask Zakiya the first time you’re going to if you can email her the other days you’re sick.

- There is one more week to give feedback on the sneaking out policy that Tian presented on every floor. If you have comments on the policy please go by Tian to discuss this with her.

- Petra and the school architect are working on creating a gender neutral bathroom in school. This will be probably in the humanities wing.

- Tian set up a list with classrooms that are free during school, where DP students can quietly work, if the library is too full. The free classrooms during school time can be seen in the picture.

Hey guys,

Two updates:
1. the school leadership is aware that some students are worried about their scholarships due to the recent political changes affecting exchange rates. Peter has requested that if you are affected, to let your tutor or admissions know. Sadly, there is currently no solution at hand, but the school is definitely aware and they are trying to see what they can do.

2. Those who signed up for the UWC pen-pal thingy, I apologise on behalf of the team who is organising it. IB hit most of us as DP2s and this means that we're struggling to organise it and get it done. The plan now is to ensure that we have the pairings ready by Christmas. We are trying our best but we're sorry that it is taking so long.

For those of you interested, we just had a meeting and discussed the following:

Community time team has new members, and we hope you enjoyed today session.

We thought about the way countries are assigned to culture weeks, and thinking whether some need to be changed (more will follow later).

We are looking into the possibility of putting an Action activity, such as jogging, every morning for first period. It's an interesting idea backed up by lot's of scientific study that exercise in the morning makes you more energised for the day.

We discussed about our tutor time periods, whether they're needed and beneficial to the community. We decided we need more sessions to get a feel to how they are going.

We will be meeting with the Heads of Department on the 25th November to increase transparency between the teachers and students, and the agenda and results of the meeting will be shared with you.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us!

Update from Akke:
Hey Everyone!
First of all, I wanted to thank you all, the response we got for the form I sent out about the UWC SWAT was intense! I didn't know so many of you guys actually checked your email!
The result of the form were unsurprising yet still quite shocking: 73.7% of you guys have trouble finding a place to study at our school! This is not good, so I will definitely try to work on that.
Besides that, 97.7% of you guys clicked yes when we asked whether you want UWC SWAT to happen, so that is definitely a go! Expect to hear about the first session coming up very soon! The answers regarding time were quite varied, so we will have to work on that. A possibility is that we have UWC SWATs at different times depending on what fits in best with the teachers' and students' schedules.
Again thank you for the responses, and good luck this weekend!

Update from Hannah:

Today I met with Tian for our regular weekly meeting. We discussed the following points:

- We discussed the access of day students to the floors. According to the handbook you have to sign in to a floor as a day student, but this does not happen most of the time and I also think it's unnecessary. So if the community agrees to it, we can hopefully change this policy. This will be discussed at the next residents meeting.

- Both last and this year I send out a questionnaire for having floor come togethers, where you can bond with your floor over some tea on Thursday. Almost everyone liked the idea, however it's not taking place yet. That's why I have to work together with Tian and the RMs to make it happen.

- Next week there will be another Student Led Tutor Time, this time organised by the student life reps. It will be again facilitated by your group facilitators. Akke, Tamar and I worked together with Simon and Liz on this idea to hopefully start a fruitful conversation about sleep, expectations and planning.

Updates related to questions of the forum:
- Tian is looking into options for a spiritual centre. This will either be on the bottom floor of King Willem building or she was thinking about getting a garden house that could function a spiritual centre.

- Tian will be looking in new ways of providing health care after your questions and comments on the health system at school. She is looking into opportunities for online signing up sick and then Zakiya checking on you. Or giving your house parents the ability to sign you up as sick.

Both ideas are still in an early process and therefore it will take some time before you’ll see a change.

Update from Tamar from the Parliament:

I had a meeting with Tian about creating social spaces where DP students can hang out, study, or organise small events. This will be available to day and residential students and would provide a DP social space.

We will also shortly introduce a time where DP day students can eat lunch in the mensa for us and the management team to see how this goes in terms of food, space and experience to be able to make the mensa lunch time available for DP day and residential in the future.

Taking Diwali as an example, we would like to encourage all events and activities to be for the entire DP community and announced with enough time beforehand. We know this is not always possible, but we encourage it as much as possible to allow everybody to experience UWC.

Akke and I sent out a poll about UWC SWAT (provided study space for students to productively get work done) by email so please give us your feedback!

Update from Hannah:

Today I met with Denise and Rikki from the PSG to talk about residentials having dinner at day student families. With this we hope to improve the relationship between residentials and day students and give residential students a familie to go to.

We decided that the last week of the month of november there will be a Dinner Week (28 Nov. - 4 Dec.) where all the students and families that sighed up have dinner to kick off the project.

Soon forms will be send out where you can sigh up if you're interested in sighing up. After that we will link you to a family where you can go for a good meal and a homey feeling.

Update from Juul:

Had a meeting with Tom yesterday where we discussed several things regarding the academic future of the school:
- the opening of the art and music rooms after the break (it's happening!)
- the possibility of finishing an A language in one year instead of two (will most likely happen next year!)
- and finally a surprise for the students and teachers which will be unveiled shortly, or at least before the December break!

Kind regards,
Juul

LiveUpdates 21st October:

Jeremiah & Peter
1. UWC Congress set to go... Good luck to Marius Smits & Pratibha
2. Head of College. Plans to transition smoothly are being worked on now. More information to follow...
3. From now on the student council will get to have a coffee and tea session with the Board members before the board meetings. Hopefully this will help build stronger links between our community and the Board. More updates to follow on this :)