Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity. Any grammatical errors should be attributed to The Record editors and not to the candidates.
Why are you running for the role of co-presidents?
Mohini: I’m very excited by the vision that Saeed and I have as a group of bringing the community together. Having been here for almost two years, I see some of the gaps in community building and I strongly believe that we can bring those gaps together. I’m also just excited to give back to the HLS community because I feel like there have been so many great people here over the last couple of years who have helped me out. This is one way I hope to give back.
Saeed: For me, it’s really a passion about the school. I think through all of my other involvements on campus, whether that was with SG, or with coaching HLS talks, whether it was my time in HALB, in SALSA, or various student orgs that I’ve been a part of, I’ve noticed that each org has a specific niche of people who are interested in it, and working together we’ve been able to make amazing events and make things happen for the whole community. I do think that Student Government has not reached its full potential, and it can be the avenue for reform and creating a cohesive student body between the 1Ls, 2Ls, 3Ls, LLMs and SJDs. Mohini and I are community builders: we have relationships in almost every single student org on campus just through friendships, relationships, collaboration with work, and I think that’s what you need for an effective student body.
Can you talk about your contributions to Student Government during your time at HLS so far?
Saeed: I was part of the advocacy and campaigning for the winning campaign last year. In student government, we have meetings about once a month. I worked with a fellow LLM in hosting some of the biggest events we had on campus. For example, I helped organize the student faculty basketball game that took place several weeks ago. I led on the apple picking event last fall, and we had over 100 people show up. Those massage chairs that y’all utilized at the end of last year, I actually was able to leverage my relationships with the Harvard Association for Law and Business, and with Student Government to make that fully subsidized with the help of DOS as well. I not only gave an HLS talk this year, but I coached the previous HLS talk we had earlier, and will be coaching the one taking place next week. I think through my involvements with other orgs on campus too, I contributed to the student body and student government.
Though you’re running separately on your own ticket, you’ve endorsed other candidates on your platform. Can you talk about your decision to do so?
Mohini: A huge part of ensuring that an organization is functional is making sure that there is effective communication between different levels of that organization and making sure everyone is on the same page. We think that some of the difficulties that have arisen in past student governments happen because people come into student government with a different idea of what they want to get done. That leads to some friction and some difficulty in terms of getting everyone on the same page. In order to bring the full power of the student body to student government in terms of community building and in terms of advocacy, we believe that it’s very important to bring together a full slate of people who are on the same page in terms of what they want to get done, and who are led by two people who each understand individual’s specific needs, interests, goals, time commitments.
Saeed: Some of the criticisms of Student Government in the past have been that it is inefficient, that students aren’t aware of what SG is doing. There hasn’t been much enthusiasm for student government. I think the reason for that is that there wasn’t a cohesive team to make stuff happen. Mohini and I alone cannot accomplish as much as we could with the support of everyone else. Even though we’re going in individually, you can also say that every single person that is listed is a check-and-balance to keep us accountable. We’ve made certain promises during this campaign, and all of our endorsed candidates will keep us accountable.
What would you like to do if you win?
Saeed: One thing that I really valued in our pitch is community building and building alliances amongst many of our religious groups. It just so happens that Ramadan, Passover and Lent are all overlapping. I’ve already taken the lead and the Student Government will be sponsoring a joint interfaith dinner on April 3rd. We plan on inviting faculty, students, plus ones, and I really want to make this an annual event as a way of creating understanding among different religious groups and promoting collaboration. I also want to use SG to give the LLMs a proper farewell.
Mohini: We do have a five point platform that we’ve put out in our website and in our candidate statements. Some of the priorities in terms of community building: we want to make sure to solidify an affinity group council within the student government. We also want to make sure we have biweekly meetings with different student organizations on campus. I’ve had meetings with the heads of several different student organizations, and every single one has expressed [a desire to partner] with other student organizations, to share events and also share ideas.
Lastly, I did a lot of activism in undergrad. I went to a university that had a lot of problems with racism. The KKK leafleted several times while I was there. I started and led an activist group on campus for several years that fought those types of things. If I learned anything, it’s that you need to make sure that different activist groups on campus are in sync. [An example of] a gap I’ve noticed is that LIPP organizers and SPIF organizers are not in constant communication. That’s confusing because if they had more manpower, they would be able to accomplish more. That has always been the case in activism.
What type of culture do you intend to cultivate in your administration and how do you intend to establish this culture?
Saeed: I want a culture of transparency, collaboration, and effective advocacy. In collaboration, we’ve established a very diverse slate, people in LAMBDA, Section 8, MLSA, WLA, and more. Collaboration will mean that I can contact the president of WLA, or I can contact my friend in HALB or in SALSA, and we can collaborate on events and activism or things. I think one weakness that SG has had is the lack of firepower or relationships present in all reaches of the campus. In terms of transparency, I want people to see what the student government is doing. I want us to have effective social media with weekly updates on advocacy and events. I do think that the SG email is an effective tool that we can use.
Mohini: I want to highlight that we’ve actually already cultivated a lot of this in our slate as we’ve been organizing. We do check-ins with our representatives to make sure that they’re feeling okay because campaigning can be tough. We do check-ins to make sure that they’re okay with everything that we’re collectively putting out, and they give us feedback. They have held us accountable already in the course of the campaign to make sure that we are working as well as we can for them. We want every single one of our representatives to be able to tell us if they’re in trouble and if they need help. It also helps that we’re already all friends because it helps cultivate a sense of trust in our relationships, and it will help bring that sense of trust into SG.
What happens in a situation where you win, but the candidates you endorsed don’t?
Mohini: The interesting thing is that we do know just about everyone. I am confident in our ability to show them our platform, explain our goals, and ask them what they were hoping to get out of student government in order to give them assignments that are in line with that, and also be respectful of their time and their energy. I wouldn’t be worried about that if that happened, but I also do think that our candidates have all put in a ton of work, they’re very passionate about every special interest that they’ve discussed, which is listed on our website. I think that cohesive group is going to be ideal, but I also think that we have the flexibility to make it work.
Saeed: I think it’s also important, if I’m not mistaken, that we, as far as I know, are the only slate that actually brought on a Director of Student Organizations. We know that there were perhaps some complaints in this previous administration regarding that position, so we made sure that we prioritized recruiting a Director of Student Organizations.
What type of strategy do you intend to use when advocating for students to the administration?
Mohini: We will make sure student leaders get face time with Dean Manning. We have monthly meetings with the Dean and that’s a luxury that a lot of student organizations don’t have. During the conversations we’ve had with student leaders the complaints/issues they have voiced is that their advocacy is not always fully supported by other students in groups that they are not a part of. What I mean by that is, we are hoping to use the affinity group council, the PI coalition, the biweekly meetings with student organization leaders to galvanize support from those other leaders for each of the leaders’ asks. To have not just one student leader go before Dean Manning with us there, and present their asks, and have it seem like it’s just one student leader representing a small portion of the student body. We want to have as many students as possible coming to these meetings with Dean Manning, to support everyone else in their asks. That is especially effective based on my experience with activism, and we just want to show that we do have manpower, we are unified as a student body, Saeed and I are able to unify people as a student body, and they have to take our concerns seriously as a result.
Saeed: It’ll be a mix of collaboration and applying pressure. We’ll make sure that we’ll leverage the full utilization of our 2L reps, our 3L reps, our Director of Student Orgs and all our appointed positions to get these reforms passed. In these meetings, we will be efficient; we will run through our reforms and we’ll have evidence to back up whatever claim we have. If we are talking about exams, we’ll make sure we have petitions, if we’re asking for space, we’ll be able to showcase that a certain number of people are coming. If we’re asking for a budget increase, we’ll showcase that we have a justification for it, that we’re hosting various events.
Mohini: One other thing that I want to say is that if we’re elected, student government is going to be 110% effort for us. We are all in. I hope from our campaign people have realized that we care a lot about this. The time and effort we put into bringing together a slate is the type of effort we will bring to student government to unify the entire student body.
Is there anything else that you want the community at HLS to know?
Saeed: There aren’t many things we can guarantee – we don’t know the future. But one thing Mohini and I will promise is that no one will be a more zealous advocate of the diverse interests of the student body and we look forward to serving this amazing campus – we are together for a better HLS.