HUA Co-Presidents Introduce 18-Member Cabinet at First Meeting of Year

Harvard Undergraduate Association Co-Presidents Zachary “Zach” Berg ’28 and Daniel Zhao ’28 introduced an 18-member executive cabinet at the HUA’s first general meeting of the semester on Sunday, adding new vice presidencies for technology, history, advocacy, and service.

The cabinet has doubled in size since last year, making it the largest executive slate in the student government’s history. Roughly 40 students attended the nearly hour-long meeting, which Berg and Zhao used to lay out their agenda for the semester and introduce the new leaders.

The new vice presidents of technology will lead what Berg called the co-presidents’ “Presidential Initiative” — an effort to teach students how to use the artificial intelligence credits Harvard now offers undergraduates.

Berg and Zhao campaigned on securing $1,000 in Claude credits for every student, a pledge the College outpaced on its own. Undergraduates can now request one of two license tiers: a standard account, which comes with $750 worth of tokens each month for use across Claude’s models and Claude Code, or a premium account, which comes with $2,500 worth per month.

Asked to raise their hands if they knew about the credits, fewer than half of the students in the room did, Berg said.

“That’s probably not a good thing, because we want to make sure that these resources are generally accessible,” he said.

Berg said the new vice presidents of technology, Angela A. Yang ’28 and Sophie R. Zeng ’28, would lead that effort.

“We have two incredible vice presidents of technology who are not only going to make it accessible to people, but are going to teach student organization leaders and are going to teach all Harvard students who want to learn how to use these AI credits in the most productive way possible how to do so,” Berg said.

The other new positions are aimed at preserving the HUA’s institutional memory and broadening its advocacy work.

Eshaan S. Mani ’28, the HUA’s vice president of history, said his role would be to “accumulate some good resources” for future co-presidents so that administrative transitions run more smoothly.

Melissa Chai ’30 and Sean B. Merrill ’30, the vice presidents of service, said they would work to represent student concerns and expand service work on and off campus.

“This year, we’re really partnering with the rest of the HUA as a whole, as well as with communities throughout Cambridge and Harvard, to extend Harvard’s outreach,” Merrill said.

He added that the pair hopes to “really try to get more volunteer opportunities, feel out the students’ needs necessarily, and really try to represent Harvard and the surrounding Cambridge community the best we can.”

The cabinet also includes vice presidents of civic engagement and advocacy, roles Berg said would further expand the HUA’s outreach.

The HUA’s executive officers also outlined their priorities for the year during the meeting, including simplifying funding applications for club sports teams and an in-progress proposal to subsidize textbooks purchased through the Harvard Coop.

Extracurricular Officer Adam Han ’29, a former Crimson news editor, announced that the HUA had finished building a website with the capability to let students browse Harvard’s student organizations and apply to them in one place — a “Common App” for clubs, he said. Han wrote in a statement that the platform, called the “Hue-Guide,” would launch officially in the spring, after the extracurricular team completes outreach to clubs.

During the meeting, Berg and Zhao discussed the HUA’s civility event last week, which drew roughly 60 students to a “civility game” led by Harvard alumni Saul Perlmutter ’81 and Bonnie Z. Bottoms ’81. The game grouped undergraduates and asked them to hold “difficult conversations” about politics, religion, and other subjects.

Berg said the turnout was not enough.

“That is still less than 1 percent of the campus, which is kind of crazy to think about,” he said. “So as we try to think about how to increase civil discourse and civility for the other 99 percent, we want to continue to engage in discussion with you all.”

The pair framed the general meetings as an accountability measure, pledging to bring administrators before students to field questions at general meetings — “all the way up to President Garber,” Berg said. College Dean David J. Deming is slated to appear at a later meeting, he added.

“If you say, ‘This is something that I want talked about in the next meeting with Dean X,’ we will talk about X thing in the next meeting with Dean X,” Berg said.

Berg also announced the HUA’s first fundraiser of the year, a “State of the Campus” event on Sept. 17 that will give several student organizations a chance to pitch their cause to assembled alumni.

—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.