Senate Heads manage and connect two relationships: one with the student body and one with Head of the Upper School Justin Brandon. Both connect to the four heads with weekly meetings, and ideas brought up by the student body on Wednesday make their way to Brandon by Friday.

On January 10, Brandon proposed the heads take their responsibilities further and rewrite Section I of the Code of Conduct. After a disciplinary controversy in December, Brandon believes the texts need to updated to reflect student life.

Section I details “general guidelines for community behavior.” The section asks students in school to “observe the basic principles of honesty and respect for law and for the rights and property of others,” and goes on to detail principles that make for a conducive learning environment, covering general respect and orderliness. Edits would be made for an updated publication next year.

Senate Head and junior Lindsay Carlin recalled talking with Brandon one Friday about changes made after what Brandon called December’s “crisis mode.”

After Brandon sat through town halls and student dialogues, he felt it was only right to give students this platform. “It’s clear that there’s a student relationship that as adults we don’t see,” Brandon said. “And I think it’s important for our students to establish what they feel are the more important aspects of behavior that’s expected for Parker students.”

Brandon believes that with increased transparency the administration and students still need separation, especially when it comes to discipline. In disciplinary investigations, Brandon emphasized that administrators can’t give updates on internal decisions. “I just hope that we get to the point where there’s a little more trust in our process, that we will do what’s right while understanding that we can’t share the results of what happens to people in our community,” Brandon said.

Discipline will be one focus of the rewrite. Brandon noted that content would be added about hate speech policies, likely throughout the handbook.

“I was flattered that he asked us and was excited by the opportunity,” Carlin said. “I think it would be nice to have student body input beyond the cabinet.” Carlin is still not sure if responsibility would fall to the Senate Heads, plenary, cabinet, or a special task force.

“How great to have it start with students,” Upper School History Teacher and Student Government Faculty Advisor Jeanne Barr said. “That’s absolutely how it should be.” Barr noted that she would prefer a task force to rewrite over the Senate Heads, kids who already have opportunities for leadership.

“Kids are hungry for leadership roles,” Barr said. “They want them, they need them, and they’re looking for those opportunities.”

“It’s a pretty big undertaking, but it’s also a sign of the level of trust that we’re establishing,” Brandon said. “Not every school allows students to kind of rewrite parts of the handbook, but I think it makes sense.”

“How do you create a space for people to have a chance to be a part of the process?” Brandon said. “That’s the biggest challenge when you’re dealing with 336 constituents.” When he described the process, Brandon envisioned the heads creating drafts, putting parts out to the student body, gathering varying opinions, and repeating. All changes to the handbook are made over the summer, so any edits to the Code of Conduct would need to be finalized by June for review by administration and lawyers.

“It’s more kind of a check and balance to make sure we’re meeting the needs of our students in a more honorable way,” Brandon said. According to Brandon, lawyers will look at the new handbook policies and make sure discipline is consistent with the school’s past practices.

Another responsibility of a legal team is to help with issues of privacy. “Give families a chance to work on things in a private manner that kind of doesn’t create a public shaming,” Brandon said.

“There’s been a lot of progress since December because there’s more conversation happening,” Brandon said. “We continue to create this community where people feel ownership and pride and feel comfortable being here and are confident enough to speak up when something is wrong.”

“I try to be the eternal optimist even when it’s down, and there were some down times here,” Brandon said. “We’re getting to a place where we’re able to address behavior when it’s brought to our attention and put it in focus.”

Brandon noted the Code of Conduct was not the only change he had tried to make since December. “Creating a platform that’s a basis for students to have these conversations,” Brandon said. That was the main goal of dialogues in advisory, the upcoming gender workshop week, and Upper School and Advisory Council, Brandon said.

Besides working with Brandon on the Code of Conduct, the Heads have determined what counts as a passable PB proposal and rolled out portal training alongside him. They’ve also kept up weekly meetings. “Meeting with him week after week, we’re pretty comfortable giving him the feedback in an uncensored way,” Carlin said. “I guess some weeks it’s less spicy than others, but I think the four of us and Annette Njei are not afraid to be honest with him and critique the administration and the school in a constructive manner.”

“He’ll explain the reasoning behind certain school policies that we may not love or may be confused about,” Carlin said. “When talking about people or certain situations or things that have come up in the Upper School, he has to be pretty vague, and he’s honest about that.” Carlin noted that she thinks he gives an appropriate amount for an administrator to student relationship.

Outside of their work with Brandon, both Carlin and Barr are concerned with student engagement.  “I think there’s a little bit of a chicken or the egg thing, where Student Government doesn’t do anything, so therefore I’m not going to care about anything, so Student Government isn’t going to do anything,” Barr said. “That becomes self-fulfilling, where lack of student engagement is the reason there’s a lack of student engagement.”

“Cabinet is a meeting that happens Tuesdays at 7:30 in the Humanities Center with the doors closed,” Carlin said. “The minutes are accessible…I’ve never heard anyone say they’re reading the minutes…I think we need to do a better job of making transparency accessible to the student body…throwing transparency in people’s faces because they don’t want to seek it out.”

“Go beyond tinkering with Student Government issues and really think about the life of the school,” Barr said in regards to her goal for Student Government. “I don’t know how well we do this, and I’m not saying anything against the current Senate Heads at all, but I think the role of Senate has become, ‘we have to have a meeting on Wednesday, what’s our topic going to be,’ and sometimes they limit themselves to just that.”

“Sometimes we have too narrow of a vision for what we can accomplish and there are reasons for why those visions have been narrowed, some of them out of our control, some of them within our control,” Barr said. “I would love to see us take those ones that are in our control and push, push the boundaries.”