UC Lays Out Timeline for Gender Campaign Initiative

At the first Undergraduate Council meeting of the year on Sunday, representatives discussed creating a comprehensive timeline for a gender solidarity campaign at Harvard and methods for populating a proposed events calendar website and smartphone application.

On Feb. 1, Undergraduate Council President Ava Nasrollahzadeh '16 and Vice President Dhruv P. Goyal '16 led the first UC meeting of the semester. By George J Lok

Council members are currently undergoing a series of steps to reach out to student organizations and administrators and launch the campaign to the general student body. The campaign, called Harvard HeForShe, will be an extension of an United Nations gender equality movement that began last September.

Specifically, the Council is seeking to consolidate efforts of gender groups and organizations by asking for specific campus commitments from those organizations that could be promoted by the campaign.

“By the end of February, we hope to have a more specific campus commitment plan and consolidate all the input from other organizations,” said Michelle S. Lee ’16, a Mather House representative and project manager of the Harvard HeForShe campaign. “[We also] want to include those people who usually wouldn’t be involved in the conversation. This includes males and other underrepresented groups.”

Lee is an inactive Crimson news editor.

In the week following, the UC plans to gather input from administrators during meetings with Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana and University President Drew G. Faust, preparing to launch the campaign during Women’s Week in early March via a forum at the Institute of Politics.

“This could be one of the most defining things the UC has ever done,” UC Vice President Dhruv P. Goyal ’16 said at Sunday’s meeting. He and new UC President Ava Nasrollazadeh ’16 said in an interview Wednesday that this campaign was one of two main priorities for the duo this semester.

The Council also discussed the details of implementing a new Harvard calendar website and smartphone application, the other priority of the new UC leadership. UC Finance Committee Chair Leah C. Singer ’16 said her committee will require events funded by UC grant money to post their events to the newly proposed calendar. Representatives expressed hope that this requirement would help populate the calendar.

“It’s actually an accountability structure as well as an outreach technique,” Singer said. Currently, student groups that receive UC grant money for an event must make that event open to the public.

However, the UC’s most immediate efforts are concentrated toward midterm elections. Representatives urged one another to encourage women, students of color, and LGBTQ students to run in the elections.

“We want to make the Council much more representative of Harvard’s diverse student body,” UC Treasurer Meghamsh Kanuparthy ’16 said.

Elections will open on Feb. 10 and close on Feb. 13, with open seats in Adams, Dunster, Leverett, Lowell, Kirkland, and Pforzheimer Houses.

—Staff writer Jalin P. Cunningham can be reached at jalincunningham@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @JalinCunningham.