Students crowded into Ernst Common Room for the last Student Government Association (SGA) General Assembly meeting of the school year. The SGA Executive Board brought in food from China Express in New London and Conn’s new Dining Services partner, Chartwells, brought a lemonade drink in mason jars (which is a request I had personally made of them).
Parliamentarian Timothy Friend ‘25 welcomed everyone to the final meeting of the school year and led this General Assembly’s last rendition of the SGA Oath. The Assembly still lacked full attendance but did meet quorum in order to vote on the previous week’s resolutions.
The meeting began with a presentation of Student Leadership Awards.
President Bella Castellanos Palacios ‘25 presented the Jay Levin ‘73 Award to Chair of Finance Maddy Rose ‘25. This award is voted on by Senators and Class Presidents and is awarded to a member of the SGA Executive Board for exemplary performance throughout the year.
The Margaret Watson Award recognizes a member of the General Assembly for outstanding leadership and performance. Chair of Residential Affairs Mel Rollins ‘25 presented this award to Class of 2024 President Lyndon Inglis.
Chair of Communications Eli Craddock ‘26 presented Blackstone House Senator Abdul Dare ‘27 with the Rising Star Award that recognizes a first year of the General Assembly who has demonstrated potential for future leadership within the SGA.
I had the pleasure of presenting the Larry Holloway Award to John Triandafillou, Conn’s Harris Hero, for his outstanding commitment to the college, student body, and greater campus community.
The SGA presented the Impact Award for Equity and Inclusion to two recipients: Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Intersexuality Studies Ariella Rotramel and Director of Sexual Violence Preventation and Advocacy Nicole Powell, presented by Chair of Equity and Inclusion Kassandra Olmedo ‘25 and Chair of Equity and Inclusion-elect Kazi Stanton-Thomas ‘26.
This week’s open forum was with Chartwells. District Manager Toby Chenette, Senior Vice President of Marketing Henry Howard, and Vice President of Marketing for the east Mark Tarkanick were present to represent the company. They presented a short PowerPoint on what Chartwells is and what they aim to accomplish on Conn’s campus.
Howard stressed the company’s value of the specific campuses they work with. He said, “We listen, we listen, we listen, and we listen. We try to do our best to incorporate what you want to see in the program.”
Chenette informed the General Assembly that he had a meeting on May 1 with the Dining Services management and hourly team. Because Dining Services is unionized, Chartwells is not permitted to discuss some staff-specific concerns, like wages. Chenette was able to, however, let Dining Services and the General Assembly know that Chartwells will honor each staff member’s original start day with the College and provide benefits respective to that tenure of work.
Chenette is hopeful that the staff is starting to be “truly excited about the program and everything we’re going to bring to campus.”
As far as what Chartwells hopes to bring, Chenette talked about instituting teaching kitchens throughout the year, bringing new technology to display menus and ingredients, and Harris renovations next summer. In response to feedback from students that the current seating arrangement is uncomfortable and overwhelming for many. Chartwells hopes to break it up with new seating formats, nooks, comfortable places to hang out, and more high and low seating options.
Chenette also highlighted Chartwells’s commitment to authentic foods from around the world. He emphasized that they will source authentic ingredients and will not cut corners by substituting with more local ingredients. Specifically, he said they will ensure they do not “American-ize” cuisines from around the world.
Howard explained that Chartwells will use an on-campus student advisory board for Dining. He said, “It’s really about listening to you and creating programs for students by students.”
Following the conclusion of their presentation, Friend opened the floor to questions.
The first question, and one that has been the biggest concern for most throughout this process, was on whether all Dining Services staff will be able to keep their jobs. Because of the nature of the change, Dining Services staff will need to reapply to be employees of Chartwells rather than Connecticut College, but Chartwells plans to accept all employees currently working on Conn’s campus that pass the background check and complete their updated I-9 forms. This was received with some concern from the students present, and Dean of Students Victor Arcelus tried to address this by informing the General Assembly that all current Dining Services employees already have to pass background checks that are likely similar to those performed by Chartwells.
There was an unclear response to Stanton-Thomas’s question about ways students will be empowered to hold Chartwells accountable to take care of our Dining Services staff and fulfill their promises to the community.
Chartwells also plans to provide a meal trade option in retail dining that would allow students to use regular meal swipes to get food from Oasis instead of using Dining Dollars.
At the conclusion of the Chartwells open forum, many people left and the General Assembly transitioned to a second open forum topic: a Joint Statement in Solidarity with the Students at Barnard College, Columbia University and Colleges across the United States.
Presidential Associate Tenzin Choezom ‘27 and Afaf Albur ‘27 presented the statement to the General Assembly with the hope that this represents a standpoint that Conn’s SGA would take as a whole. The statement supports student right to protest, condemns police brutality against protesting students, and criticizes the administrators that have not stepped in directly enough to protect their students.
Albur said, “As a student body, we should be able to speak out against this brutality that is happening against our peers.”
Rollins brought up concerns that the next president and some administrators could be upset that we did not discuss this solidarity statement with them prior to signing the staple list. Others present disagreed and felt that we shouldn’t be afraid of doing something just because it will upset administrators.
Stanton-Thomas asked, rhetorically, “Are we more concerned about upsetting the administration or are we more concerned that people should be able to go back to school and be protected?”
Manwaring House Senator Elena Crowell ‘25 added that she thinks “the president kinda knows what school she’s coming to.”
Our obligation to work with faculty, staff, and administrators is certainly present, but many expressed that they felt the SGA has a greater commitment to students first.
Vice President Ian Hopkins ‘25 spoke on his opinion that the SGA chooses to sign onto the solidarity statement as he said, “I think—especially because of our campus and our campus’s history—I think it’s especially important we share our solidarity with them. We haven’t been put in those situations where we’re having the shit kicked out of us by the police. It would be so hypocritical for us to be so gung ho about taking over buildings and then not say anything when this is happening to other campuses.”
Dare expressed his hope that we would receive support if the same thing was happening to our students. He said the worst punishment he can imagine for college students is being kicked out of their homes and their schools. He wished for SGA to take a firm stand in support of student voices on all campuses.
After excessively extensive conversation on the type of vote the General Assembly would want in order to pass a vote to determine whether to sign the solidarity statement as the whole SGA or not. The Executive Board had previously discussed the matter and informed the General Assembly that if the Assembly chooses not to sign, they would sign on as the Executive Board.
Katharine Blunt House Senator Asha Worley ‘27 brought up concerns about being able to represent her whole house. She felt that House Senators don’t have the ability to make decisions for the students in their houses.
Others responded that the internal conflict of voting to represent constituencies versus one’s own beliefs on a matter is something every elected official has to face in every decision. The SGA is our most local form of government at Conn. Everyone on the General Assembly faces the difficulty of representing hundreds of people in the decisions we make. As slow as our current bureaucracy moves, it would move ever slower if every individual was expected to be involved. I, and others, stressed the importance of SGA elections for the very reason Worley was grappling with. Each member of the General Assembly was encouraged to do their best to trust that they were elected for a reason and to enhance the elections in the future if they felt that they were not carried out with as much integrity and competition as they should have had given the power and responsibility the position would hold.
Ultimately, it was decided that a simple majority vote would determine the voting portion needed to determine whether the SGA General Assembly would sign the solidarity statement: 50% +1, 2/3, 3/4, or 4/5. The General Assembly voted in favor of a simple majority, 50% +1, to vote to sign the statement.
With one abstention, the General Assembly voted all in favor of signing the statement as the Connecticut College Student Government Association 2023-24.
Moving on to voting on old resolutions, the General Assembly approved all of the resolutions proposed on April 25: the One-for-One in One Year Tree Policy, the addition of a Town Senator to the General Assembly, calling for changes to the College’s preferred name policy, (my beloved) Resolution Resolution, and three changes to the SGA Bylaws. You can read details on these resolutions in SGA April 25: Advancement Open Forum.
In committee reports, Stanton-Thomas acknowledged the voyeurism and transphobia announcements brought up by Associate Dean for Campus Life Geoff Norbert during Floralia assemblies. They appreciated this display of centering DEI topics and hope that the College can use this as an example going forward to address DEI issues.
Rose celebrated that all 40 Finance Committee allocation hearings were successfully completed and thanked those on the General Assembly for their service on the committee.
During Castellanos Palacios’s presidential report, she informed the Assembly that there are many construction projects set to occur over the summer—not just Crozier-Williams and Cro Blvd renovations. Some buildings will be condemned and taken down as well.
Hopkins announced the College has closed the books on this fiscal year with $25,000 in profit. Unfortunately, this is not very much. In a short explanation, this means the College has $25,000 to spend on anything more than they spent this year, which is unlikely to go far. This is good news, in some respects, because it means we aren’t in debt, but we do not have much “wiggle room” to afford additional programming.
Norbert concluded the meeting with a final thanks to the General Assembly. He said, “There’s a lot of things you could be doing on your Thursday nights. And you all choose to be here working to better this school, better this institution, and thank you.”
