Ivy student-leaders convene

Students from all eight Ivy League schools were on Penn's campus this weekend to participate in the Ivy Council Fall Conference, an annual event designed to bring together student government leaders to discuss common problems. Delegates to the conference -- all of whom were members of their respective schools' student governments -- participated in workshops on a variety of topics, including financial aid, social life and alcohol, health services, race relations and sexual harassment. At a community relations workshop led by College senior Megan Davidson, the Undergraduate Assembly secretary and a chairperson of Civic House, students discussed topics ranging from ways to improve student participation in community service projects to ensuring safety in campus neighborhoods. The reactions of conference attendees seemed to be generally positive, with many students saying that they came away from the weekend with new ideas for solving problems and improving student life at their own schools. "All of us coming from Ivy League schools, we're facing a common set of issues," Brown University freshman Kevin Schwanfelder said. "We're approaching these issues in different ways." Cornell University junior Connor Galvin agreed that the common issues faced by various Ivy League schools allow students to offer helpful advice on dealing with these problems. "It's very constructive to hear how students from different peer institutions deal with problems," Galvin said, noting that this fall's conference had especially useful programming for the students participating in the weekend's events in comparison to previous Ivy Council conferences. "We have a lot of the same problems, but we don't all have the same solutions," he said. "It's striking how very similar our problems [are]." Galvin noted that the Ivy Council is planning to expand the scope of its work in the future to "give us more legitimacy." Among these efforts is IvyCorps, a planned Ivy League-wide community service weekend which was discussed at one of the conference's programs. Engineering and Wharton junior Malhar Saraiya, the UA's University Council Steering Committee representative and an Ivy Council vice president who was one of the fall conference's main organizers, said IvyCorps is tentatively planned for April 9 to 11 next year, which will also be the weekend of the Ivy Council Spring Conference at Princeton University. Saraiya noted that many Ivy League schools already have community service days, so participating in IvyCorps would simply mean rescheduling an existing event.