The Harvard Undergraduate Association (HUA), the new student government formed to replace the old Undergraduate Council, is hosting its second election for its officer positions. Given the crucial role of the finance committee in securing and distributing funding for student organizations, and some issues present in the initial semester, the Independent reached out to both candidates running for the position, Josh Kaplan ’26 and Corbin Lubianski ’24. Both candidates have released campaign statements on the HUA’s website, thehua.org.
1. Why are you qualified for this position?
Josh: I am a current member of the HUA finance committee. I am not a career politician, and I can bring a new perspective and insight to the HUA. As a member of the Finance Committee, I have helped clubs to receive the maximal amount of funding we can give them.
Corbin: Although the position technically has no qualifications specific to finance, I feel that adequate experience working with student organization grants and the grant application process is key since the main job of the Treasurer is to student organization club funding equitably. As the Director of Grants, I feel that I can start the club funding process straight-away.
2. Will you maintain the current monthly-semesterly split application process, or change it?
Corbin: I will strictly maintain the current monthly-semesterly split application process to reduce the burden of Finance Committee members. A major reason why the current student government did not have many student organizations request funding was due to their weekly funding sessions. This meant submitting a weekly application and attending an interview. This was very tedious, and I would hate for this to be translated to the HUA’s grant system.
Josh: My plan is to eliminate all application cycles. The HUA finance committee will receive requests from each club when they need funding, and we will do our best to provide them with money from whatever eligible funding is available.
3. What is the other biggest change you want to make to the funding process?
Josh: Combine all applications into one spot. Clubs can submit this form as often as they would like throughout the semester, and that way all funding pools, whether from the Finance Team or other HUA Teams, will be in one central location.
Corbin: The funding process could be streamlined more effectively administratively which would trickle down to clubs receiving a better experience. The current infrastructure is quite sophisticated and well-organized, but still needs to be adapted to automate the process. A key change would be to modernize the Finance Guidelines as it was, in-large part, what the previous student government used. The Finance Guidelines need to find a central goal to focus the policies on, like gearing away from primarily food spending to operational expenses.
4. Only three people are currently listed on the finance team. How will you get more students to volunteer?
Corbin: The website snapshot of the finance team is a bit incomplete. Finance committee members had the opportunity to upload a profile if they wished. It was decided not to push members to publish their profile unless they wanted to. In reality, there is a consistent group of 8 members. I believe that it is not sustainable with how little help we receive, despite the dedication of the current team. The solution will no longer be looking at students to volunteer, but to work and be assigned to a multitude of tasks ranging outside of typical grant review. Currently, Finance Committee members have a variety of possible duties such as recommending policy changes to the Finance Guidelines and writing official memorandums. The committee is looking towards offering paid positions alongside the DSO to review grants and receipts since volunteering multiple hours of week with little appreciation or compensation is frustrating.
Josh: As a current member of the HUA finance committee, I can tell you that is not the accurate number of members of the finance committee. However, there are students I have spoken to who are interested in joining, but do not know how to (even though the finance committee emailed out applications), and I would like to do more outreach to let students know what we do, and how they can get involved.
5. In the past few cycles, clubs were notified of drastic cuts to their requests because the money requested was far greater than what was available. How will you ensure clubs can get a better picture of what to realistically request and expect?
Josh: We need fewer people to waive their fees. It is important for the Harvard administration to include the student activity fee in financial aid. This would increase the available funding pool for clubs. Additionally, letting clubs know up front how much they should expect per semester would be a valuable step that I would like to see implemented, and can be roughly calculated up front based on the number of clubs, the average funding requested, and the pool available.
Corbin: As the Director of Grants, I am normally the one to complete the cut calculations so it does feel painful to see so many clubs get so little. To be fair, I think that clubs do a great job of realistically requesting funds from us since they follow the guidelines. My belief is that the HUA budget should be at least $1 million to properly accommodate club funding. We were able to get a 10% increase in our operating budget by showcasing how fiscally responsible the Finance Committee is, so I believe we can gain more next year after showcasing the issues that clubs are facing due to funding. I do think some clubs need to seek outside funding sources, especially those who have such large operating budgets.
6. Funding distribution was delayed from its stated deadlines last semester. How will you ensure funding is more timely in the future?
Corbin: Funding distribution, as in the process which clubs physically got their payment, is done solely with their payment type and information. HUECU payments were relatively timely, but it was through other methods like Zelle, Venmo, and paper checks that made it very tedious for the Finance Committee to disburse. As for the funding allocation announcements, I believe that they were on-time consistently since I was doing the automated announcements. I believe we have a more sensible schedule for funding distribution than last semester, so I believe clubs will appreciate it.
Josh: I was not a member of the finance committee last semester, so I don’t think I can comment on this. However, we could have clubs select available times, so that the interview process is set up at the same time as applications are submitted, cutting the timeline down significantly and increasing efficiency.
7. What is your position on the referendum to split the treasurer position into two co-treasurers?
Josh: It’s a great idea. In practice, a similar system is already in place with the Treasurer and Director of Grants operating together to get funding out in a timely and responsible manner. This change simply formalizes this system, and assigns those powers to two Treasurers, allowing the student body more of a say in who these people are. The Finance team requires a lot of work, and at least two people are needed to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.
Corbin: For adding another Treasurer position, I believe that it is absolutely necessary since managing club funding and the accounting is a lot for a Harvard student to operate effectively given their workload, social life, jobs, and other commitments. The Finance Committee had to do this within our group just to divide the workload. For example, I currently help the Treasurer with club funding and another Finance Committee member helps the Treasurer with accounting.