HUA Unveils International Student and Alumni Liaisons at Weekly Meeting

The Harvard Undergraduate Association announced the addition of three new positions to their executive cabinet at a weekly general meeting Sunday evening.

Co-Presidents Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 and Caleb N. Thompson ’27 unveiled their executive cabinet with three new positions — alumni, community, and international student liaisons — a change that Sial and Thompson said reflects their hopes to increase undergraduate involvement in the HUA.

“The reason we have a bigger cabinet is because we feel there are more people who want to get involved this year, and we want to facilitate that process in an easy fashion,” Sial said. “We want HUA to be much more accessible to everyone who wants to get involved.”

The Co-Presidents said the alumni liaison roles support their campaign goals of utilizing alumni connections to increase financial streams.

“The reason we have alumni liaisons is because we have recently engaged with a lot of alums who have supported us, and our long-term vision that the HUA is financially independent and student life isn’t impacted by external shocks as we have seen recently,” Thompson said.

Sial and Thompson also described the international student liaison position, held this year by Alfred F.B. Williamson ’28, as period-specific and intended to increase international student representation and support. Uplifting international students during Harvard’s tumultuous legal battles with the Trump administration was a central issue in Sial and Thompson’s April campaign.

“My role as the international liaison is essentially to ensure the Harvard student government has the best interests of international students in mind and will actively seek to advocate for international students and protect international students from attacks from the Trump administration,” Williamson said.

The executive cabinet selection process included a written application, and final selections were made by Sial and Thompson.

Co-Treasurer Daniel Zhao ’28 also announced the completion of this semester’s club funding allocations, which were disbursed to applicants over the last week. Zhao said the HUA disbursed $246,432.41 in total from slightly more than $1,000,000 in requests, $567,230.23 of which were eligible requests under the Finance Team guidelines.

This semester marked a roughly $30,000 increase in total requests from 250 clubs who applied for funding, but additional funding from the Student Activities Fee this year allowed the HUA to partially match that demand with an $8,000 increase in distributions compared with last semester.

Zhao added that clubs still seeking funds will be able to submit emergency requests “in the next couple days.”

The HUA also unanimously voted at the meeting to allocate $4,000 to the Extracurricular Team for a “Thrive Together Grant”, which is designed to “promote more collaboration, mixing, and companionship between different organizations’ members.”

The grant will be eligible for any two student organizations looking to host collaborative events, unless the two have previously hosted a joint event in the last year. Applications and more details about the grants will be announced at a later date, Extracurricular Officer Joshua M. Schultzer ’28 said at Sunday’s meeting.

—Staff writer Claire L. Simon can be reached at claire.simon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @ClaireSimon.

—Staff writer Nina A. Ejindu can be reached at nina.ejindu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @nina_ejindu.