Ivy League Student Government Leaders Discuss Campus Initiatives at Virtual Conference

Undergraduate student government leaders from all eight Ivy League schools and MIT gathered to discuss student leadership initiatives on their campuses at a virtual event on Sunday.

While this year’s “Ivy+ Student Government Conference” was a new event hosted by the Harvard Undergraduate Association, the event follows similar past conferences that gathered student leaders across colleges.

Before student government leaders discussed initiatives at their schools — such as the “Dartmouth Sleep Project” and ideas to increase student civic engagement — Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana gave a welcome speech.

Khurana mentioned that college deans across Ivy+ schools had a similar meeting last week to discuss how to “strengthen the legitimacy” of their institutions. He added that one of the most important roles of student government is to share student body concerns with university leadership.

“[Student government leaders] help us become better leaders at the university level by making sure that we are not just hearing things that people are saying to us, but the things that are actually happening on the ground,” Khurana said.

During several keynote presentations, student government leaders concurred that a primary focus of their councils is to increase student influence in university decisions.

Chukwuka Odigbo, a junior at Dartmouth and member of its student government said that the Dartmouth Student Government implemented a “student issue survey” in the fall. The survey polled the student body on topics including campus food and the school’s consideration of dissolving the current housing system.

While DSG also holds office hours, focus groups, and town halls to collect qualitative responses, Odigbo said that quantifying students’ opinions through surveys is just as important.

“It’s helpful to see how student support increases or decreases for a specific thing over time,” he said.

Odigbo said DSG offered a $5 Amazon gift card as an incentive to students for filling out the survey, resulting in a response rate of 25 to 35 percent.

In a separate presentation, Cornell Student Assembly representative Flora Meng discussed a resolution crafted by the group encouraging Cornell to “divest from systematic violence against civilians in Gaza.”

“There may be a strong pushback from the school’s Trustee Board on this resolution, especially with its target wording for issues related to Israel,” Meng said.

“But at the same time, we see that it’s totally not a black-and-white answer since the student groups who are sponsoring this resolution are not just students who are from Palestine, but also from diverse backgrounds, even including some Jewish students,” she said.

Meng said the resolution did not pass due to concerns that the proposal would promote antisemitism on Cornell’s campus, leading the assembly to form an Environmental, Social, and Governance committee to “do a more holistic review.”

After the event, HUA Co-President Shikoh M. Hirabayashi ’24 said the event was a “great success” and lauded the interchange of ideas.

“I think the biggest takeaway is learning different initiatives that can also be implemented in your school,” he said.

Still, Hirabayashi said the HUA’s vision for future student government conferences includes holding them in person and on a larger scale.

“Now that we’ve done this and we have the momentum, I’d like future conferences — maybe on an annual or semesterly basis — to be held in person,” he said. “Over one or two days, I think it’d be much more rewarding if people can meet and befriend each other in person.”

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

—Staff writer William Y. Tan can be reached at william.tan@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @william_y_tan.