The next UC President and Vice President will face many challenges. Our vision is for a united campus, with the UC working with student group leaders, administrators, and the college at large focusing on:

  • Advocating for Student Life by Bringing a Real J-Term for 2011 and Beyond and Simplifying Room Reservations
  • Bringing Harvard Online through an Events Calendar, Study Guide Library and Online Party Forms and Study Cards
  • Collaboration and Transparency on Budget Cuts focused on Bringing Back Hot Breakfast and Providing a Real Student Voice in Budget Cuts Talks

We hope you will take the time to look at our complete vision for the UC and for improving the Harvard experience. Please let us know what you think!

Advocating for Student Life

Bringing Harvard Online

Collaboration and Transparency on Budget Cuts

Advocating for Student Life

A Real J-Term for 2011 and Beyond
Plans for January 2010 will be done by the time the new UC president starts, but we are already working to create the J-Term we dreamed of when we first came to Harvard. Eric personally led the charge on advocating for students who wanted to stay on campus this J-Term, and those efforts led to 93% of applicants for J-Term housing receiving it. We will build off of that success by immediately engaging students groups and the university to provide real choices for 2011. For those who want to get outside the Harvard bubble, we will work with the OCS and the OIP to provide interesting off-campus opportunities. Want to learn how to breakdance? Produce a TV show? Learn to cook? Work for a nearby start-up? J-Term should be the opportunity to try something new that you’ve never had the chance to learn before, and we will work with student groups to provide real options such as these for next year.

For 2012 and beyond, we plan to create academic opportunities far removed from the usual classroom experience. One of the most exciting prospects for J-term is the possibility of microcourses, in which professors could spend 1-3 weeks teaching something unique in a casual setting that would allow students to get forge close contacts with faculty. We also hope to empower individual students to develop their own courses. At UC Berkeley, student-initiated courses cover a wide variety of subjects, from solving Rubik’s cubes and doing magic tricks to learning yoga and even using game theory for Starcraft. The possibilities for these sorts of classes are endless, and they would fit in wonderfully with Harvard’s J-Term. Finally, while these programs get themselves off the ground, we will push the administration to negotiate with MIT to expand cross-registration to include J-Term programs.

We need to start working now to make these realities happen, so we will begin reaching out to the administration, meeting with department chairs, and approaching important faculty to gauge interests and build consensus around these programs. Students at schools like MIT already take these opportunities for granted, and budget cuts shouldn’t be an excuse for failing to plan for the future.

Simplifying Room Reservations
Every student group knows that reserving rooms in the Houses and College is far tougher than it needs to be. Different buildings are controlled by different offices and reservation systems range from state-of-the-art web sites to paper calendars with pens dangling off the side. The UC has been working on this issue for the past year, and we’ve been a part of those efforts. Currently, Eric is working with Professor David Malan to expand his interactive maps.cs50.net site to include basic information on reserving rooms across campus that has never been consolidated in one place before.

We will also have the UC create an interactive web site with detailed information about every reservable room on campus as well as links to reserve it. This web site will allow students and student groups to find exactly which rooms meet their specific requirements and are allowed to be reserved at specific times, taking most of the confusion out of the process. Longer term, we will work to establish a central booking system in coordination with existing efforts in the College, so that any student can instantly see when rooms are open and receive immediate confirmation of their reservations.

Supporting Large Events: Social Space Solutions
Last year’s UC candidates talked about it over and over, but the lack of social space on campus has still not been adequately addressed. In a time of budget cuts, we will focus on the most practical and immediate ways to utilize existing social spaces to improve social life now as well as working towards long term solutions. In addition to continuing the current plans for UC social grants which will allow the UC to fund certain parties and other social events in the Houses, we will implement a program where the UC reserves certain large, tough to get spaces on campus at different times each month and works with student groups to allow them to hold events there. Many student groups don’t hold big events due to difficulties finding and securing venues, so this program will expand the number of groups holding large social events for the entire campus. Long term, we will also work with the President’s Common Spaces Task Force and House Renewal program to fight for dramatic expansion of social spaces on campus.

Supporting HoCos: The House Life Fund
With House budgets being cut, many HoCos are feeling increased pressure on their budgets and are being forced to cut programming. We believe the Houses are key to upperclass social life, and the UC can do more to support HoCos. One of our first acts as President & VP will be to create a special House Life Fund, where each HoCo can apply to the UC for up to $1000 of extra funding to improve House Life this year. HoCos will only be able to use these funds to cover programs that would not otherwise be able to occur this year, and preference will be given to programs and events open to the entire campus.

Taking the Next Steps on Ad Board Reform
Last year saw the biggest changes to the Ad Board in over a century, a major victory in making the Ad Board a more transparent and just disciplinary body. We can’t stop now: there is still much work to be done to make the Ad Board work for all students. We will fight for passage of the proposal currently on the table to reduce the number of students forced to withdraw for a year due to first-time, inadvertent academic dishonesty cases. Longer term, we hope to start a broader discussion on campus about students’ role in the Ad Board and discipline in general, with the goal of creating an alternative option to the Ad Board that involves student members.

Ensuring Equality: Gender Neutral Housing
Thanks to the work of the Trans Task Force and Queer Student Alliance, significant strides have been made in the past year in Harvard’s gender neutral policy so that students with gender based needs may live in mixed gender housing. We want to make sure these policies work in practice however, and advocate for expansion of gender neutral housing upon demand so that all students regardless of gender identity can receive gender neutral housing. We also advocate that OSL should reserve the right to accommodate students seeking gender neutral housing without consultation with the Houses, meaning there can be no House Master discrimination when gender neutral needs are expressed by students.

Reducing Student Group Costs
While there’s a wide variety of student groups at Harvard, we understand that their basic needs are often the same. They buy posterboards for the activities fair, eat Nochs at late night meetings, and have to deal with annoying costs like HUPD details, venue fees, and projector rentals. We believe that we can leverage these concerns to make things easier for student groups. We will approach local vendors for commonly purchased products and negotiate collective discounts using the buying power of the student body, expanding on the work the UC is already doing with the new Groupon program, and we will negotiate to reduce the requirements for HUPD details. While the UC already has projectors to lend, we will expand awareness of this program and purchase more projectors in order to better satisfy the technology needs of student groups. As the sources of funding for students groups dwindle away, we need to ensure the UC minimizes student group costs that we can continue to fully support student life.

Setting the Groundwork for Ethnic Studies
We believe that Harvard’s courses offerings should reflect the diversity of the student body. Eric worked directly with current UC President Andrea Flores to unanimously pass the ethnic studies position paper through the UC last spring. We will continue working with the UC and the Ethnic Studies Commission to secure the secondary field in Ethnic Studies while pushing for a full-fledged concentration. We will also negotiate for future endowed chairs in Ethnic Studies for when Harvard returns to financial normalcy.

Advising our Advisers
We have heard from many freshmen that they often find academic advising somewhat limited and unproductive due to many academic advisers’ lack of experience in their advisee’s interests. To resolve this, we will work with the Freshman Dean’s Office and Advising Programs Office to develop more effective training sessions for academic advisers that will give them a strong knowledge base to better advise freshmen. We also propose using adviser feedback surveys to provide extra remedial training to academic advisers who aren’t quite cutting it. Finally, we will push for an overhaul of freshman advising program to make sure that academic advisers reflect the interests of the student body. We have no problem with History professors, but they perhaps aren’t the best advisers for likely Computer Science concentrators.

Going beyond consulting: eRecruiting for Public Service Jobs
We all know that Harvard does a great job with eRecruiting for consulting, investment banking, and other financial-sector jobs. Most of OCS’ opportunities are in these areas, and we have a huge career fair dedicated to making these groups visible and available on campus. However, none of these same opportunities are offered for public service jobs. PBHA, PSN, and the IOP do have helpful resources, but we will push Harvard to make these resources more easily accessible online. Additionally, students currently must travel to Tufts for a good public service career fair. We strongly believe that Harvard must correct this problem. We will advocate to OCS that they begin a public service career fair at Harvard where students could learn about and meet with representatives from groups like Teach for America, City Year, and the Peace Corps in the same afternoon.

Bringing Harvard Online

Events Calendar
How often have you heard about a cool event the day after it happened, frustrated that you missed the announcement for it in a sea of dozens of open list emails? Instead of this flawed system, imagine an online calendar that has every student group, arts, academic, and pre-professional event at Harvard College. It would categorized by event type, synchronized with all electronic calendars commonly used by students, and have special filters such as only showing events with free food. Furthermore, student groups could add pictures and videos to the event blurbs in order to better attract event-goers.

This vision comes not just from us, but from student group leaders from across campus that we have contacted about useful calendar features. We’ve met with CS 50 professor David Malan, who controls the current Harvard events calendar, and have worked with him to focus on these issues before the next version of the events calendar rolls out later this year. And in order for the events calendar to be as fully categorizable and customizable as students need, we plan on continuing our discussions with students and work with Professor Malan and other administrators to see this vision through. Long term, this work will also help reduce the need to poster and spam email lists with event announcements, by making it easier to find events you’re looking for.

Study Guide Library
As of now, a couple study guides get shared amongst students within student groups and athletic teams. This is a good thing, but it would be better if these study guides were compiled and made available to all students. Incomplete public study guide libraries already exist, but by having a UC-controlled centralized study guide database, we can make sure that we have the biggest, most continually updated, and most open in all of Harvard.

UC, Harvard-Wide Craigslist
As college students, we’re buying and selling things all the time, but right now these sales flood House and group email lists, filling our inboxes but limiting the number of students that actually sees each item to a small part of campus. We will create a UC “Craigslist” site that makes it easy to post items you’re looking to buy or sell to every student. Buying textbooks, selling tickets, senior sales for furniture, or finding the last piece of your costume for a party will be far easier when it’s simple to find across the entire campus.

Online Party Forms and Study Cards
Too many parts of our daily lives at Harvard are mired down in paper forms that require unnecessary printing and waste time. We will work to bring these processes online to make all of our lives easier, starting with party forms and study cards. Online party forms would save the hassle of tracking down every one of your roommates and would increase party safety by providing links to safety resources directly from the application. The form could also be integrated directly to DAPA grants, which the UC now funds, to make it easier to get money for your parties. Online study cards would save time for students and advisers and would be a natural extension of the my.harvard system.

Database for Thesis Advisers & Research Assistant Positions
Many students would love to break into the world of academic research but have few ideas on where to look, as opportunities are usually poorly advertised. The task of finding a thesis adviser is also quite daunting, as students often lack the connections to find a faculty member that can guide them along in the process. To solve these issues, we will work in coordination with academic departments and OCS to establish a database of open research assistant positions to provide new exciting opportunities for undergraduates. We will also work to create a listing of advisers for past theses to make the process of conceiving a thesis easier. Faculty will appreciate the increased, centralized access to engaged and talented students while students will enjoy the enhanced connections to faculty.

Making UHS More Accessible
How many times have you or a friend waited for hours at UHS, just to be told to get more sleep or take an aspirin? With Swine Flu fear spreading faster than the virus itself, more and more students are going to UHS every day. We want to make it easier for you to get health advice for common concerns without heading to the Holyoke Center, so we’ll work with UHS to create a blog with advice on what most students are coming in for, when you should stay in from class, and when you need to come in and see a doctor. We’ll also work to help everyone better understand the details of the student health plan to make informed decisions about waiving coverage. As a member of the Student Health Planning Committee, Eric knows the key people at UHS to make this happen.

Collaboration and Transparency on Budget Cuts

Bringing Back Hot Breakfast and Improving HUDS
If there is one thing Harvard administrators know, it is that students want hot breakfast back. Johnny has met with the head of HUDS, Ted Mayer, on two occasions in order to discuss the various ways HUDS could bring it back, whether by bringing hot breakfast back in one House per neighborhood or simply amping the current breakfast up a little in all Houses. They have also discussed the key obstacles in bringing it back- namely House parity and sufficient funding.

We will strongly advocate for bringing hot breakfast back, but we are also deeply aware that any solution regarding hot breakfast will have to involve the entire student body through polling and open discussions so that House parity issues do not end up killing the solution’s adoption. HUDS has made it clear that any approved plan will have to work in the long term, not just the first two years. Therefore we will make sure student feedback regarding this issue is exhaustive, and that students and workers can live with this solution for many years to come.

While working on bringing back hot breakfast, we will also work with HUDS on other ways to immediately improve dining, such as putting coffee in Fly-By and expanding Brain Break options.

A Real Student Voice in the Next $110 Million in Cuts
After helping wage a year long campaign to demand a transparent and community driven budget cut process, coming up with the idea of Harvard’s Idea Bank, and heading the UC Budget Cut Task Force, Johnny has already made real progress on creating a true student voice in the budget cut process.

However, there is more work to be done. Student groups, HoCos, and email lists all over Harvard should be continually solicited for budget cut and added revenue proposals. Potential budget cuts affecting student life should be aired before students in townhall settings before they are finalized. It was the townhall meetings last year that caused Harvard administrators to reverse their decision on shuttle cuts, so we will advocate for similar gatherings for future budget cuts so that the administration can understand all consequences to budget cut decisions before they are made.

Greening Harvard and Saving Green
Due to $110 million that FAS has to cut in the next two years, Harvard has a real opportunity to make considerable reductions in paper waste and energy. Some of the solutions are no-brainers: enforcing thermostat rules so that classrooms cannot be heated or cooled beyond a certain limit can save Harvard $100,000 by one estimate. Making power saving features default on all Harvard computers will also save money. Also, our proposal for an improved Student Events Calendar will make advertising for events easier and decrease the need for wasteful posters (and the 7am wake-ups required to put them up). For the tougher decisions however, whether they be reducing aesthetic lights or paper cups, students should be polled in a statistically sound manner before any final decisions are made so that no top student priorities are cut.

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