Ava Nasrollahzadeh ’16 and Dhruv P. Goyal ’16 worked on their first big initiative together two weeks before finals last spring. Working on a collaborative project between the Undergraduate Council and the Business School, they had to persuade busy undergraduates to sign up for the school’s inaugural online course offerings on its new HBX platform.

One hundred thirty-nine College students—20 to 30 percent of the course’s total enrollment—ultimately signed up, and all “unanimously had a brilliant experience,” Goyal said. The UC also received at least $1,500 in compensation from HBS, and is slated to receive at least $3,000 this year for continued publicity efforts.

Half a year later, Nasrollahzadeh and Goyal both cite this project as a formative experience in their partnership.

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“When you see things like that,” Goyal said, “when you’ve worked with someone on such a big project before, it was really a no-brainer that we wanted to work together [again].”

Hoping to continue their partnership with Nasrollahzadeh as president of the Council and Goyal as vice president, the three-year UC veterans are campaigning on a platform that seeks to find new funding sources for students and increase the sense of community among undergraduates.

THE FOUR Fs

Although Nasrollahzadeh and Goyal’s platform focuses on perennial UC issues like funding, they argued that their tangible plan to improve student life sets their campaign apart.

That plan will address what they call the “Four F’s”: funding, food, freshmen, and fear of missing out.

One of the pair’s top priorities is securing a steady source of funding for student groups by leveraging  alumni donations. They argue that the University should allow alumni to earmark a certain portion of donations to go directly to the UC.

“While we will definitely continue conversations with the administration to increase student group funding, we recognize that at some point the administration is just not willing to budge on this issue,” Goyal said.

Nasrollahzadeh serves on the UC’s Alumni Relations team, and Goyal is involved with the Harvard Alumni Association, and both said they have spoken with alumni who have been supportive of the idea.

“I informally pitched this idea of them giving just a part of their usual donations to Harvard...to the Undergraduate Council,” Goyal said. “They’re very receptive to the idea, because they can actually see their dollars at work in a very tangible manner. [And so] there’s this wealth out there that the UC has never leveraged in the past.”

Rahul V. Pandit ’15, president of the Harvard College Microfinance Project, which endorsed the ticket, cited these ideas for achieving financial sustainability as key to his group’s endorsement.

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