Harvard Undergraduate Association Passes Proposal for Free Food on Valentine’s Day

The Harvard Undergraduate Association passed three proposals at its second general meeting of the term Monday evening.

The proposals included opportunities for undergraduates to get free meals around Valentine’s Day and student organizations to learn about fundraising.

The HUA Inclusion Team proposed the “Cupid’s Chow” initiative, which will allow undergraduate students to obtain a $15 UberEats voucher on a first-come, first-serve basis from Feb. 14 to Feb. 18. Up to 235 students will be able to obtain the voucher and redeem it to purchase a meal of their choice.

Ashley C. Adirika ’26, an officer on the HUA Inclusion Team, said the initiative is a chance for students to practice “self-love” if they would rather not participate in dating activities like Datamatch.

“The inclusion team wanted to do something nice and provide an UberEats voucher for people who don’t have plans for Valentine’s Day, or who are just going to be home in their dorm rooms working,” Adirika added.

The Inclusion Team also proposed allocating $2,000 in funding towards an initiative launched last semester that seeks to “incentivize organizations to work together,” according to Adirika.

Last semester, the HUA funded eight requests — which included multicultural events and brain breaks — across 21 student organizations. The additional funding will allow the HUA to continue subsidizing the cost of collaborative events.

In a third proposal, the Inclusion Team requested $350 to support a “Secure the Bag” event on Feb. 20 during which student organization leaders will learn about how their organizations can raise money.

“The concept behind this is that we know that clubs have requested over a million dollars in grants,” Adirika said. “Obviously the HUA doesn’t have the capacity to fulfill all of those requests at 100 percent capacity.”

“We want to give them alternative ways to fund money, whether it’s through hosting their own fundraisers or sponsorships,” she added.

Adirika said that the HUA plans to invite the College’s Dean of Students Office to the event “so that they can talk about the different grants that exist at Harvard that clubs can take advantage of beyond the HUA.”

During the spring semester, the HUA’s Finance Team plans to allocate a total of $240,000 to student organizations, though the budget has not been finalized.

HUA Co-Treasurer Corbin C. Lubianski ’24 said the funding decisions for clubs will be finalized “later this week or early next week.”

After the meeting, HUA Co-President John S. Cooke ’25 said he was pleased with the proposals that passed.

“Great meeting today,” he said. “We were able to finalize the budget from the finance team, pass some wellbeing and inclusion team initiatives that we’ll be letting the student body know more about in our email coming this week, and develop more insight into some future projects.”

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.