Sachee (left) and Khansarinia (right)
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” (Or in the school.) Gandhi’s words of wisdom really spring to life when UC elections are around the corner. From ceaselessly canvassing candidates, to colorful posters, to long letters of intent slid under the door, nothing can stop the UC president and vice president hopefuls from trying to be the change that they would like to see at Harvard. This year though, along with one of the introductory letters comes an interest-piquing souvenir that is literally, a puzzle, or a piece of one.
This puzzle piece came from Yasmin Sachee ‘18 and Cameron Khansarinia ‘18, now UC president and vice president elect. Their campaign slogan, “piecing it all together,” lends similar insight into their aspirations as the future leadership of the undergraduate council. Top on their agenda is fostering a sense of belonging and comfort, whether it’s recreating the social scene, making a multicultural cabinet, or requiring sexual harassment trainings every year instead of just once. But to quickly try and qualify their leadership as just piecing together a puzzle, and trying to foster a sense of belonging would be inaccurate; the school has long had a mission as well to promote accessibility, safety and overall well-being for students, but Sachee and Khansarinia have a different approach to addressing the same issues, and promoting the same values.
“I think for us, um, we sort of recognize and love the diversity and the breadth that this campus has: the people and the perspectives and the backgrounds that people come from. And so we want to sort of work with that and thrive with that. Um, so you know, having large policies, large events to like try and fit the entire campus, is not really what we believe is the best way to go about this,” Sachee explains, nodding. “We want to work with that diversity and help people do things in their own way, and give people ownership of what they want to do.” Sachee and Khansarinia have a sort of bottom-up approach rather than top-down, where they want each piece of the puzzle to decide for itself where it fits and how it fits, rather than being pushed into a predestined picture. They want to promote the sense of belonging and the belief that one deserves to be here, but even more so they want to promote “ a sense that your voice matters,” in the words of Khansirinia. “ ’Cause I think, you know, we’ve often been pushing for a sense of belonging, but the administration says, ‘here’s a program, here’s how you should belong, like, here’s a thing, here’s how you’re going to belong,’ whereas for Yaz and I, it’s a very critical thing that students can voice their opinion ‘here’s how I want to belong,” he says.
The finals clubs sanctions, opposed by both the president and vice president elect, are an example of administration trying to instill too broad and too vague a policy as a solution to an important and complex problem. “I’m against the sanctions, and I think Yaz and I are on the same page about this, is that it’s falling in line of this school’s administration and college’s one size fits all approach to problems, that just doesn’t work.” He continues, “When you approach a problem with a solution that nearly completely lacks nuance, for example, this, the sanctions are…about exclusivity, sexuality–it’s about class–it’s about so many things, but…it’s not attacking the root of the problem.” He cites the impacted women’s groups on campus as an instance of the shortfalls of the sanctions, “There’s just collateral damage; that’s a huge number of women on this campus that are affected by that.” Sachee expresses similar sentiments; while she understands the motivations and the purpose of the sanctions, she is opposed to the approach that was taken. especially because of the lack of student input–“There was no student input when the sanctions were made, and again no student input recently when the faculty were voting on it, etc. etc…” She concludes, “We fully acknowledge that there is an issue of social life on this campus, and that’s something Cam and I want to work towards, but we feel that the sanctions do not address it, and do not address it in the correct way.“
It was things like this, along with their experience on the UC that prompted Sachee and Khansarinia to run for office.
Sachee has been happily in the UC since freshman year, and is an active and effective member and leader. “It’s definitely taken up most of my time, which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed,” she reports, smiling. “On the UC, I’m really really passionate about, sort of, gender equity, and I’ve worked a lot on the council to increase gender equity, and it has achieved a great increase…since I’ve been on the committee.” Most recently, Sachee served as Student Relations Committee Chair, which successfully established her as a liasison between student groups and the UC and is in part the motivation that prompted her to run, and the drive behind a lot of the future policies and programs. “My committee is one that deals with students and student groups a lot, and so when we were putting together the campaigning platform, like, you know the ideas we had from students were the ones we often used.” For instance, she and Khansarinia have made peer counseling funding a top priority, after seeing multiple peer counseling groups come to them saying they did not have sufficient funds. Their idea of a multicultural cabinet, similarly, derives from their experience on the Student Relations Committee: “Some cultural groups came to us and said that they don’t get any facetime with admin, and that’s something we really want to change, by making a cabinet of cultural leaders that get facetime with administrators.”
Khansarinia has similarly qualified his experience on the Student Relations Committee as “eye-opening.” Being the Chair of the Rules Committee in the Student Relations Committe has allowed him to interact with many groups of people, and see from many different perspectives. “I’ve had a lot of, I think, really eye-opening interactions with a lot of people on campus, whether it’s Damon Clark, who is the [vice] president of [Native Americans at Harvard College] (NAHC) or whether it’s ppl from SLAM, who came to us for the HUDS endorsement, or whether it’s ppl from the Black LGBTQ and LatinX caucuses were pushing for caucus systems, so I think in the Ruels Committe, really the pleasure of seeing so many people who I otherwise would not have come in contact with, when they come to UC to ask for endorsement of their cause or organization, um, it really has been eye-opening.”
In conjunction with the Native American Students Group, the UC has endorsed Indigenous People’s day to replace Columbus day. They are currently working on writing a letter to president Faust, Provost Garber, and Dean Smith in order to address this issue and fight for their cause.
When asked about how they met and decided to work together, the two have nothing but respect for one another. Sachee describes the first time she met Khansarinia, at UC retreat last year, where he “cracked some hilarious joke, and everyone burst out laughing.” Since then, they found their paths crossing more often in their work on the UC, and have grown much closer due to their being on the Student Relations Committee. “I just really saw Cameron as someone who was working to make the school a better place, make the council sort of like a community, and a great community to work in, one of our priorities is, obviously, for the school, and one of our big priorities is internal council relations, and making sure that everybody appreciates their work and feels like they’re taking part in something.”
While Sachee was drawn to Khansarinia’s amazing humor and incredible passion, Khansarinia was impressed by Sachee’s sterling integrity and unbelievable tenacity. Having been in the UC and having held leadership positions for so long (she was first on the council when she was secretary), her skills and experience are both remarkable. “When somebody on the council needs to get something done, yasmin is one of the first, if not the first on the council that they’ll turn to, because they know that it’ll be timely, and it’ll be well done.” Furthermore, Sachee’s determination and diligence on the UC made Khansarinia certain that she was the best running mate. And since then, the dynamic duo had been formed.
Sachee and Khansarinia form a formidable partnership, with personalities that complement one another nearly flawlessly. “You know we both sort of work off each other quite well; Cameron sort of keeps me grounded. He always finds the positives in a situation.” During their arduous door-dropping adventure in the campaigning stages of the election, Sachee found herself in Kirkland at 4AM, completely devoid of energy. “I literally came out of an entryway, and laid down on the grass, and Cameron was like, ‘We’ve got to keep going, We’ve got to keep going!’” Having given her the energy and enthusiasm that he always possesses, they went on to continue delivering their candidacy statements (complete with the puzzle piece).
Sachee keeps Khansarinia grounded as well, albeit in a different manner. “If I’m getting too, you know, silly, or having too much fun with something (not that she’s not fun), she kind of makes sure that we’re focusing on the stuff we need to get done. ‘We’re here to do work–you can have have, you can be joyous, but we have jobs to do, and we have to get down to work.’”
“On the dynamic duo…I don’t know–what are we?” Sachee asks, turning to Khansarinia. “Effective,” he answers swiftly, prompting her to burst into laughter.
It might have the end of the UC election of 2016, but for them, the term has just begun. Having been inaugurated on December 4th, 2016, Sachee and Khansarinia are now in the midst of a transition period, where they will meet with the UC president and vice president Shaiba and Danny in order to discuss their plans on moving forward, the programs that have been instituted, and those that are still works-in-progress. It is also a chance for the newly elected president and vice president to get to know the people that they will be working closely with in the near future, in order to provide for a seamless transition as power changes hands. “And in the spring, honestly, we hope to– the moment we set foot on campus– be on the get go; we’re working towards launching our projects, if not launching them already,” Sachee says, beaming with excitement.