Most School Spirit: Uzma Issa

Halfway through our interview, Uzma A. Issa ’25 rises to introduce herself.

Two Lowell House tutors — Rhea Tibrewala and Francisco J. Marmolejo-Cossio ’12 — are giving their friend a tour of the House’s Junior Common Room. “Uzma is First Class Marshal,” Tibrewala says, “which basically means she’s the prime minister.”

“She’s the ultimate hype man,” Marmolejo-Cossio adds.

For Tibrewala and Marmolejo-Cossio, it came as no surprise that Uzma — one of the “biggest community builders” in Lowell — jumped at the chance to run for a class marshal position. They even appeared in her campaign video, holding a cardboard sign: “Vote for Uzma!”

Uzma’s not a big campaigner — running for intramurals chair, she says, doesn’t really count — so gunning for one of the coveted top class marshal spots made her nervous. But it was a position she really wanted, one full of socializing and event planning, so she went through with it. Winning first marshal was an added bonus.

“I personally have my own senior year bucket list in my room that’s full of things I want to do,” Uzma says. “And I think a lot of seniors have their own types of bucket lists. I just want to be able to host events that make people feel like their senior year was really fun.”

Uzma’s bucket list is taking her all across Harvard’s campus. A pottery class in Allston. The Kirkland Choosening. Currioke Night. Looking at the Andromeda Galaxy from the Harvard Observatory. Performing magic tricks and stand-up comedy at Lowell’s Coffee House on Tuesday.

It’s all part of a plan to make the most out of Harvard while she still can. She tries to spend as little time in her dorm room as possible. She tracks down friends on campus if they call her, so they can talk in person instead. She says yes to just about everything the school has to offer, from pickleball games to mountaineering expeditions.

It’s hard to find a social sphere that Uzma hasn’t dabbled in, however briefly. She seems to have checked out every club sport on campus — ultimate frisbee, archery, lacrosse, you name it — and has recently started going to dance and theater auditions with friends, despite “knowing we have no talent.”

Many of Uzma’s responses come in a breathless, almost endless list: all the things she loves about Harvard, or still wants to do at Harvard, or thinks other seniors should do during their final months at Harvard.

She can’t quite pick a favorite intramural sport to play. First it’s flag football, then it’s spikeball or pickleball, then volleyball or broomball, before she finally settles on flag football again. She thinks Harvard students should go to more athletic events — she recommends the Harvard-Cornell hockey match or Head of the Charles — though she still needs to check basketball off her list of games to watch. She names a number of places students could check out before they graduate: the Arnold Arboretum, the Harvard Observatory, the Mount Auburn Cemetery.

It’s hard, too, for Uzma to name what she’ll miss most about Harvard. “The community,” she says. “Just having all of my best friends living in the same House is just so cool, and just being super close to all my other friends and all the other Houses.”

But then she remembers the Harvard Archery Club, and all the experiences she can check out on a whim. Over the past weekend, she hiked Mount Carrigain with the Harvard Outing Club, helping a friend climb her 48th summit.

“I think that having access to these resources is something we’re going to miss,” she says.

Though Uzma is intensifying her widespread commitment to trying everything and anything during the countdown of senior year, her desire to make the most of Harvard didn’t just begin in September.

She truly dug into Harvard’s community, she says, when she arrived at Lowell as a sophomore. House living offered new opportunities to know the people around her and take advantage of campus: she joined HoCo, started going to intramural games, and leaned into spontaneous conversations in the dining hall.

But her school spirit is not just contained to the walls of her House, as it is for many Harvard students. Last year — after spending an afternoon helping a friend chase down his target with a spoon during the annual senior assassins game — Uzma launched a game of junior assassins, hoping to spread that joy to her own class. More than 300 students joined Uzma’s impromptu event, a tradition she hopes continues this year.

“I just put a pause on homework for two days, because that was so much more boring compared to junior assassins — that was really fun to run,” she says. “I had so much power.”

Marmolejo-Cossio knows Uzma will succeed in life, in the most surprising ways. “You see Uzma all over the House,” he says. “And then you get to know Uzma — for example, she’s hiked everywhere under the sun. And that’s one Uzma fact, in millions.”

Uzma does appear to be everywhere. When I ask for her weekend plans, she says she’ll help host the Harvard Undergraduate Clean Energy Group’s annual HUKEG party and go to the Harvard College Pakistani Student Association’s Mock Mehndi, their annual staged wedding. “My blockmate is getting married,” she says. “So I’m going to dance for her and bring her in and eat the good food and dance, for the vibes.”

Then, on Sunday, she’s walking 30 miles to New Hampshire.

“A ball of chaotic joy,” Tibrewala says of Uzma, as she and Marmolejo-Cossio leave the Junior Common Room.

“I love it,” Uzma says, laughing. “I’m going to tell my mom you said that, because she agrees.”

— Associate Magazine Editor Maeve T. Brennan can be reached at maeve.brennan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @mtbrennan.