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The Harvard Undergraduate Association convened Sunday for its second general assembly meeting under the leadership of Co-Presidents Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 and Caleb N. Thompson ’27 to hold the administration’s first policy votes and discuss updates to the HUA Finance Guidelines.
During the meeting, attendees unanimously voted to allocate funding toward two proposals for the semester from the Social Life team: $400 for an outdoor brain break next month featuring yard games and free food, and $200 for a free headshot session for students.
Attendance at Sunday’s meeting dropped from last week’s 45 to roughly 20 students, including 12 leadership members.
“We probably do need to do a better job of letting people know where it is because, yeah, I feel like last week was pretty well attended,” Thompson said during his introduction. The meeting was not advertised, though an email sent to all undergraduates last week announced the Association’s standing weekly meeting time.
The Finance Team, which sent out their annual funding request application to student organizations on Thursday, announced at the meeting that Co-Treasurers Rachel M. Fields ’27 and Daniel Zhao ’28 will present to the Student Activities Fee funding committee Monday.
The HUA is one of four recipients of the SAF, an optional annual $200 fee that funds undergraduate student life. Last year, the HUA received $522,500 from the SAF, which is distributed through the SAF committee and the Dean of Students Office, to allocate to student organizations.
At Sunday’s meeting, Fields and Zhao also discussed two updates to the HUA’s Finance Guidelines intended to enforce receipt submission and the promotion of events as “SAF-sponsored.”
Under one new policy, clubs that fail to submit receipts by their December due date may face a deduction in the amount of funding they will receive the following semester, and in the worst case, a complete loss of HUA funding.
According to the HUA Finance Guidelines, “starting with receipt submission for Fall 2025, the finance team reserves the right to cut a club’s disbursement for the following semester by 5% per week that receipts are missing without an extension. These cuts will be capped at 20%. Continued receipt noncompliance offenses may result in a permanent suspension from HUA funding.”
“This is aiming to solve the problem of receiving receipts in August that were due in May, which holds up our auditing process,” said Fields, who is a former Crimson News editor.
During the 2024-25 academic year, the HUA began to require that SAF-funded events be labeled as such on promotional materials. In the second policy update announced at the meeting, the Finance Team will now institute an accountability measure by emailing clubs that fail to recognize HUA and SAF sponsorship in posters for events funded by the HUA.
“Student groups must acknowledge the HUA visibly on all publicity materials by including the clause ‘Funded by the HUA with your Student Activities Fee’ and the HUA logo to be eligible for funding. This will now be subject to randomized audits,” the Guidelines state.
During the meeting, Sial and Thompson announced that they had finalized their Executive Team — though they did not announce its members — and teased an upcoming HUA newsletter that they plan to debut in the coming weeks.
Residential Life Officer Isabelle G. Agarwal ’28 also mentioned during the meeting that she is planning to meet with an existing Harvard University Dining Services “Committee for Food and Friends” to discuss proposed changes to student dining.
“We’re working on getting a kosher line in Adams, more information about to-go boxes in HUDS, and getting that information out there,” she said.
Agarwal also mentioned that the Residential Life team is in communication with HUDS about looking into “changing some dining hours” that could potentially lead to longer dinner hours, though she said the team will discuss all proposed changes in upcoming meetings with House faculty deans.
—Staff writer Nina A. Ejindu can be reached at nina.ejindu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @nina_ejindu.
—Staff writer Claire L. Simon can be reached at claire.simon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @ClaireSimon.
