HUA Rideshare Program Sees $3,000 Decrease Due To Funding Shift

The Harvard Undergraduate Association reduced funding for its airport Uber and Lyft voucher program by $3,000 from last semester, citing both stricter budgeting practices and lower demand than budgeted for in the spring.

The program, funds free rides to Boston Logan Airport for hundreds of students during travel periods, received $4,000 at the HUA’s general meeting on Sunday — down from the $7,000 it received last spring, HUA Residential Life Officer Finn R. Berard ’29 presented on Sunday. Berard attributed the change to more “a lot stricter” rules on internal budget management between the HUA’s teams.

Berard added that the HUA is “trying to allocate directly within teams,” and discourage pulling funding from different teams and the executive budget for specific events and initiatives. The rideshare program was previously run by both the Residential Life Team and Well-Being Team, but now, the $4,000 will come solely out of the Residential Life Team’s $6,000 total budget.

Despite the decrease, Berard said in an interview after the meeting that he expects the HUA to fund the same number of rides. He said that the body had placed a “very high ceiling” for the program with its budgeted $7,000 in the spring, but only roughly $4,000 was used.

“It wasn’t all used, so we just brought that ceiling down to a more reasonable order,” he said.

Berard, a Crimson multimedia editor, estimated that the budget will fund around 70 rides, with each ride costing around $60 to carry three students to the airport. The program will run from Dec. 10 through Dec. 19.

Berard explained that the team also reduced funding for the initiative to balance its spending, so the team’s budget was not entirely allocated to the vouchers.

“Lowering it to a more reasonable number that also allowed more of the teams’ budgets to be dispersed and used on students for this semester seemed like the right move,” Berard said.

In the penultimate meeting of the fall semester, the HUA also allocated a total of $6,100 to various initiatives, including $500 to fund a “How to Harvard” event panel for first-years, $1,500 for care packages — equipped with squishies, face masks, and “motivational hand sanitizers” – for Thanksgiving and finals period, and $100 for a “campus gratitude board.”

The HUA is also partnering with Campus Saves Lives, an intercollegiate organization dedicated to mental health advocacy, to conduct a student survey on leaves of absences. HUA Co-President Zachary “Zach” Berg ’28 said the survey will help the organization collect data from colleges across the country to lobby administrators to improve mental health policies.

“It is far easier if you have the student governments or student groups at 10 top schools who are all going to their administrators with collective data,” Berg said.

Berg additionally announced that the body is in the “final steps of approval with administration” to roll out “QuRated,” an AI-powered course registration tool developed as a HUA presidential initiative. Berg said he hopes to roll out the tool before spring course registration closes.

Voting for the HUA’s vacant Inclusion Officer position and survey questions submitted by HUA officers and student organizations will open on Friday.

—Staff writer Alma T. Barak can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at almabk.54. Follow her on X @almabk_.

—Staff writer Theresa F. Bartelme can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at theresabartelme.15. Follow her on X @theresabartelme.