HUA Partners With Harvard Square Nonprofit to Offer Storage to Civic Engagement Groups

Harvard Undergraduate Association co-presidents Zachary “Zach” Berg ’28 and Daniel Zhao ’28 announced a partnership with Democracy House, a Harvard Square nonprofit, that will give civic engagement-focused student organizations a place to store materials, at a general meeting Sunday.

The first club moved into the space Sunday morning, Berg said, adding that any group “working with something related to civic engagement or civil discourse” will be eligible.

“A lot of these clubs require lots of physical things for events that they host either on campus or outside of it, and we hope that this will continue to be a very helpful resource for these organizations on campus,” he said at the meeting.

Zhao said Democracy House has also offered to host student events and performances.

The partnership comes five months after the College cleared the third floor of the Student Organization Center at Hilles and repurposed it for administrative offices as part of a larger effort to identify cost-saving opportunities. The roughly 50 groups that had kept offices on the floor were reassigned to 5-foot-by-5-foot storage units elsewhere in the building and told that anything that did not fit would be discarded.

Democracy House runs nonpartisan civic education and youth leadership programming. It is a project of the Foundation for Civic Leadership, a Cambridge nonprofit, and is not affiliated with Harvard.

Zaid M. Al-Ississ ’28, president of the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee, said the arrangement would ease storage for what he described as the group’s bulky materials.

“I think it’s a very good step in the right direction from the HUA to provide this type of opportunity for student groups focused on community organizing,” he said. “Even these logistical and practical matters end up being very important in the long run in order to bring people together.”

Berg and Zhao have strived to make student advocacy and civil discourse a central part of their term. The push has included a civility event earlier this month, which drew roughly 60 students, and the creation of vice presidents of advocacy and service on an expanded 18-member executive cabinet.

The pair announced that they plan to bring College Dean David J. Deming to next Sunday’s general meeting to field questions from students.

“Many of the people that we talked to when we were campaigning, and many of the people that we continue to talk to this year continue to emphasize their desire for increased transparency when it comes to matters of the administration,” Berg said.

“We hope that next week provides an opportunity to increase this transparency, to ask questions, to listen, but also to share your comments and hopefully have him listen and implement some of your ideas for the College,” he added.

Berg also called Thursday’s “State of the Campus” event, the HUA’s first fundraising push of the year, a success. The event brought together dozens of alumni, former student government members, and current club leaders.

He said he hoped the event would help “create a larger network of alumni that will help us continue to raise money in the long term.”

The HUA’s other primary funding stream, the Student Activities Fee, remains unsettled.

Co-treasurers Jake A. Marino ’29 and Polina Krumkachev ’29 said the group presented to the SAF allocation committee on Friday and expects a decision within two weeks. The HUA’s share of funding is expected to grow this year after the College converted the SAF from an optional $200 charge into a mandatory $450 one — a change that roughly doubled the fee’s total pool to $2.7 million.

Zhao said the HUA would finalize its internal budget once the allocation comes through, working with each team on an amount they are “happy with.”

“We have high hopes because the meeting went very well,” Marino said. “So we’ll see what happens.”

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