New HUA Co-Presidents Sial and Thompson Enter Office Promising Takes and Transparency

Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 and Caleb N. Thompson ’27 officially took office as the new Harvard Undergraduate Association co-presidents on Monday — the first pair of complete HUA outsiders to assume the role.

As they prepare to lead Harvard’s student government, the pair has their sights set on increasing engagement with undergraduates and improving transparency — despite what they called the HUA’s usual “black box” procedures.

Sial and Thompson also intend to be more vocal than past HUA administrations. Under a new constitutional amendment, they plan to make official statements on behalf of the body about “student issues.”

“These are issues where we feel it’s appropriate and necessary for the student body government to stand up and say something — with a high degree of care and a high degree of thought that’s going into it,” Thompson said.

Such student issues include the impacts of the Trump administration’s ongoing battle with the University — like international students’ ability to retain their visas — according to Sial and Thompson.

“If the new administration will be insanely involved at the level which they are right now, with student issues which affect us directly, then we’ll be the ones taking stances on that,” Sial said.

But the co-presidents insisted that their administration will not take stances on more divisive political issues that they see as unrelated to the Harvard student experience, like calls for Harvard to divest from companies in Israel.

“Their ability to protest, that being protected, is a student issue,” Sial said. “What they’re protesting is not a student issue.”

‘A Disconnect’

Originally from New Castle, Colorado, Thompson is a sophomore in Mather House studying Statistics and Economics with a secondary in Government. Like Thompson, Sial is also a sophomore in Mather House, double-concentrating in Economics and Applied Mathematics.

In their freshman year, Sial and Thompson first considered running for the HUA co-presidency — but their initial idea did not become a serious plan until last November, when many international students were unexpectedly denied winter housing.

Dissatisfied with their predecessors’ response to the crisis, Sial and Thompson said they were compelled to make a change.

“There wasn’t any statement, there wasn’t any call to action. We didn’t hear anything from them when we needed them the most,” Sial said. “This is something that is fundamentally wrong with the student government at Harvard, because this would never happen at any other school. That was my main drive.”

Thompson said his inspiration came from a desire to “create an undergraduate experience accessible to everyone from different backgrounds” and form a student government that directly acts on students’ concerns.

“A huge problem with the HUA now is how little people know about it — there’s such a disconnect,” he said.

“It’s very much a black box, because it ends up being the leadership meeting with these individuals in the administration, and then you never really hear much about it,” Thompson added.

Though neither Sial nor Thompson attended HUA meetings in the 2024-25 academic year, they said conversations with the former presidents and reading over the body’s constitution have prepared them to take on their new role.

“I feel very comfortable with our familiarity and think that we understand the requirements of this office very well, with a lot of it being club-facing,” Thompson said.

‘Representing Everyone’

After campaigning on the platform of not being the “administration’s mouthpiece,” Sial and Thompson also clarified how their commitment to representing students will impact their working relationship with administrators.

“Our role is to make sure that people feel represented,” Sial said.

“When the administration has a certain point of view and the student body has a distinct point of view, and they’re at odds with each other, we’re saying we’re going to take up the student point of view,” Thompson added. “We see that as our mandate, and that is our job as HUA presidents.”

The new co-presidents said they plan to gather student opinion to inform their positions, but expressed dissatisfaction with the HUA’s current approaches — such as optional surveys and referenda — which they called “historically quite ineffective.” Instead, they favor more compulsory methods.

“For us to do a good job of representing everyone, we need more data points, and we don’t have them right now,” Sial said. “But how do we get more data points? You get them to answer questions. You get students to answer questions when they absolutely have to.”

The pair said that they recently pitched administrators on several ideas for gathering this additional data — including adding questions to the Harvard College semesterly “check-ins,” which are a prerequisite for course registration.

Thompson said the pair suggested the plan to Faculty of Arts and Sciences Registrar Erika McDonald, who was “very amenable” to the idea.

“We talked with Erika McDonald about this, perhaps just adding a few brief questions, saying, ‘Hey, if we had this amount of money, or we had to make a choice between this policy or that policy, which would be your priority?’ Just to gauge student interest,” he said.

Allocating funding to the College’s more than 400 student organizations is a primary part of the HUA’s responsibilities. Thompson said the body will establish channels for alumni to donate to student organizations, as increases in the number of students opting out of the Student Activities Fee and overall funding cuts may affect the HUA’s budget.

“The Student Activities fee is funding the HUA at this point. The DSO was generous enough to cover a lot of the people who waived that fee. I don’t know the extent to which we’ll have access to that again or if the DSO is going to cover that in the future,” Thompson said.

Since taking office, Sial and Thompson have not announced a date for their first general assembly meeting — but they said they hope to “run them differently and have more students involved.”

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

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