Haverford offers a highly personalized, hands-on education characterized by student agency and ownership of experience. In the academic setting, this is manifest in the degree to which professors work side-by-side with students to do high-level research in service of developing analytical thinking while pushing the boundaries of each discipline. Because this occurs within an intentionally crafted set of curricular requirements, students can become expansive thinkers and lifelong learners. But it has become clear that such opportunities are not equally open to all Haverford students, either because of institutional barriers to participation and growth, and/or on account of learning dynamics (including misalignment between student and faculty demographics) that leave some students feeling disenfranchised, alienated, and unsupported. 

Haverford's focus on student agency extends to stewardship of community life, where student-to-student leadership and mentorship opportunities in myriad areas such as service on hiring and governing committees to experience gleaned through running more than 140 clubs and organizations. The student-crafted and managed Honor Code is designed to encompass both academic and social spheres of life, influencing everything from the spirit of intellectual inquiry to personal interactions as it suggests a path guided by trust, concern, and respect. The past year has brought a rigorous, candid, and necessary assessment of the ways in which community life as it is experienced by many students does not align with longstanding and cherished ideals that find expression in the Code.