A 20-year old Indian-American woman has been elected as the president of the powerful student’s body of the renowned Harvard University.
Sruthi Palaniappan, whose parents had migrated to the US from Chennai in 1992, was elected as president of the Harvard University Undergraduate Council while her running mate Julia Huesa, also 20, was elected as vice president, an announcement by the Undergraduate Council Election Commission revealed.
Ms Palaniappan said that she and Ms Huesa have planned to work on improving the Council’s communication with the student body in their beginning days in office.
“I think from the onset, better structuring the way we communicate with students is something that we need to already set the tone and plan for,” she said.
Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of the varsity quoted Sruthi as saying, “I think we’re going to work on it before we even leave for break and just get off the ground running”.
Ms Palaniappan was the youngest delegate at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July 2016.
According to the report, Ms Palaniappan and Ms Huesa garnered nearly 41.5 per cent of the votes as against their nearest opponent Nadine M Khoury and Arnav Agrawal, who received 26.6 per cent of the votes.
They ran their campaign under the slogan “Make Harvard Home”.
The duo, will take over from the outgoing president Catherine L Zhang ’19 and vice president Nicholas D Boucher ’19.
Currently, Ms. Palaniappan is the council’s education committee chair.