Ali Sediq ’28 and Manuel Fernandez ’28 is running for co-president of the Harvard Undergraduate Association on a promise to make the body more accessible and more independent from Harvard’s administration.
Sedike, an Afghan-American from Toledo, Ohio, and Fernandez, a first-generation low-income student from Tabasco, Mexico, said their backgrounds are the foundation of their campaign. None of them have worked at HUA before – a fact they see as an advantage.
“We have a lot of opposing views and we don’t agree on a lot of things in life and general philosophy,” Sedike said. “But the fact that we can come together and talk about this and have diverse conversations.”
Fernandez Phillips is an officer of the Brooks House Association and is involved with Latino affinity groups on campus. Sedike is associated with the Islamic Society and the Central Asian Association.
The pair said the current HUA has struggled to draw students to its meetings – a dynamic they want to reverse.
“Clearly there is a problem with students coming to HUA and making their voices heard in the first place,” Sedike said. “If we meet students where they are instead of coming to us, we can really be more effective.”
Fernandez said he would like HUA to hold mandatory monthly meetings with representatives from every affiliated group and student organization – a model he said mirrors PBHA’s cabinet structure.
Fernandez said, “If HUA doesn’t know what the monthly requirements are, how are they going to advocate for anything?”
The pair also plan to set up “office hours” in the dining hall, run weekly Instagram update videos and send out a newsletter along the lines of the one published by the Institute of Politics. Fernandez said HUA will send its communications to New York City Mayor Zoharan K. Mamdani, whose “100 days” social media posts he cited as a template for transparency.
Sedique and Fernandez said the current co-chairs, Abdullah Shahid Sial ’27 and Caleb N. Thompson ’27 was effective in responding to the Trump administration’s attacks on international students early in his tenure, but was unsuccessful on other issues, particularly pointing to the Harvard Foundation’s summer layoffs.
when college folded its three diversity offices At the revamped Harvard Foundation in July, about 35 graduate interns lost their jobs, and the foundation subsequently hired only 12 student workers for the school year. Fernandez said HUA failed to advocate for students who were removed from their positions.
“All we knew through The Crimson was that these guys were fired,” Fernandez said. “There was no HUA communication to the foundation.”
HUAs should make a practice of sharing the gist of their day-to-day interactions with deans so students can see what issues are being raised on their behalf, he said.
Sedike said he would like HUA to create an emergency fund that student groups can use when staffing or funding decisions leave them in limbo.
“If something impacts one student, it impacts all students,” Sedike said.
The pair’s platform also hinges on financial independence from college. Funding for HUA currently flows through the administration through mandatory student activity fees, a structure Sedike said compromises HUA’s ability to push back.
“You can’t bite the hand that feeds you,” Sedike said. “There will always be strings attached to it, and then we will be somewhat accountable to the college and whoever is paying that money.”
Sediqué said he plans to expand HUA’s funds to direct donations – a Alumni Donation Channel Sial & Thompson launched this year – as a source of revenue with no strings attached. He said alumni contributions to HUA should be distributed across student groups through a transparent formula, and not earmarked for specific organizations.
Fernandez said he wants the internal structure of HUA leadership to be “horizontal.” HUA’s agenda should be set to some extent by student voting, he said, so that issues beyond high-profile issues like grade caps rise to the top.
He said he recently saw a sign in a campus maintenance office that read, “Make Harvard College for the 99, not the 1 percent” and has adopted it as a guiding principle.
“Harvard should be for FGLI students. Harvard should be for international students. Harvard should be for American students,” Fernandez said. “Harvard should be not just for New Yorkers, not just for people in the final club, and not just for people with 1 percent income, that’s how the world sees us.”
“In fact, most of Harvard is not like that,” he said.
—Staff writer Mark CZ Snakewick can be contacted at (email protected) And on the signal at marksnek.62. Follow him on x et @markcsnekvik.