Laflamme admits that he was nervous about being in the minority at his first RUS meetings, but that men should overcome this initial trepidation.

“I feel like that sense of trepidation is one that RUS should be invested in dispelling,” he says.

The Next Step

Zahr says he wants to bring RUS more into the campus spotlight, just as he has done for transgender issues as part of BGLTSA.

“A lot of people on campus don’t know what RUS is—not only the acronym, which is easily corrected,” he says. “But they don’t know it’s the feminist organization on campus.”

Zahr and Flores Sternad say one of their first projects will be to raise awareness about abortion rights by joining up with the liberal political group, Students for Choice.

RUS will try to initiate a program where members volunteer to escort women to and from abortion clinics on Saturday mornings, Zahr says.

Shaking up the gender mix of the RUS leadership may only be the beginning of change for the group this semester.

Rosenberg says the group is ready to reevaluate how it operates—and recommit itself to its political mission.

“We need to be much more active about being extrovertedly political,” Rosenberg says. “We aren’t afraid to take a critical stance about what RUS has done in the past or hasn’t done in the past.”

—Staff writer Nalina Sombuntham can be reached at sombunth@fas.harvard.edu