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Turnout skyrocketed at the first general meeting of the Harvard Undergraduate Association Sunday evening, as roughly 40 people showed up at the inaugural meeting of the academic year — triple the attendance at most meetings last semester.
Though the pizza and Capri Suns available to attendees likely contributed to the resurgence of enthusiasm, the large number of interested students — many of whom were freshmen — suggests that undergraduates remain invested in the HUA despite the student governing suffering from dwindling attendance and controversy under the previous administration.
The heightened excitement in the HUA was noticed by students with previous experience in the student government.
“This meeting has bigger turnout than I saw at any of the meetings last year,” said HUA Academic Officer Matthew R. Tobin ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor.
“I’m hoping that we can keep that energy by keeping students involved and showing them what the HUA has to offer, because there’s a lot that we can do if we have the students involved to do it,” Tobin added.
HUA Co-Presidents Ashley C. Adirika ’26 and Jonathan Haileselassie ’26 began the meeting with an overview of the HUA’s limited powers — which include allocating student organization funding and appointing students to student-faculty committees — before mentioning the body’s goals for this semester, such as advocating for students to pursue degrees with multiple secondaries.
Adirika and Haileselassie also spoke about past HUA accomplishments, such as pushing for the add/drop period not to be moved up to earlier in the semester, managing the Crimson Career Closet for students to rent clothing, and holding an inaugural series of “Welcome Week” events for freshman students this year.
At the end of the meeting, attendees visited stations set up for each of the HUA’s nine teams, where they could chat with team officers and write down ideas for the year on large posters.
Adirika and Haileselassie declined an interview with The Crimson after the meeting.
Henry D. Pahlow ’28 said he “was learning a lot about the HUA” and expressed excitement at joining the academic team.
“I’m already thinking about which ones I want to join. I’m already getting involved a lot in the academics team, so I’m excited for that,” said Pahlow, noting that he recently joined the Committee on Undergraduate Education as an HUA representative.
HUA Well-Being Officer Sarah Bellagat ’27 said the meeting turnout was “very promising” and stressed the importance of students joining the HUA for it to have an impact on campus.
“We’re going to have to make sure we keep the momentum going in order to really emphasize the impact that we can have on campus,” Bellagat added.
Still, some freshman students said they expected the meeting to draw a larger crowd.
“I actually expected more people, honestly, because a lot of people here do government, do stuff like that, want to go into politics,” said Mohib Ahmed ’28.
“I feel like this would be a natural segue from working in a university-level representation to going to actual national or state representation,” Ahmed said. “I don’t know why there aren’t as many people.”
Adrian Z. Yin ’28 echoed Ahmed’s comments on the number of attendees present and said he was surprised by “how easy” it is for students to join the HUA.
“I expected at least more first-years to be interested in the HUA, but it seems like there actually isn’t that much. Also, I was actually surprised by how easy it is to join — for example, our student council, at least to get a position it was pretty hard,” Yin said.
—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.
—Staff writer Adithya V. Madduri can be reached at adithya.madduri@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @adithyavmadduri.
