MIT student leaders: Q&A with the president of the Association of Student Activities

After reviving the Brazilian Students Association at MIT, Hana Sousa went on to lead the ASA so she could advocate for student clubs across campus.

The Association for Student Activities (ASA) is a bridge between all 359 of MIT’s student clubs and groups—organized around topics ranging from acroyoga to model railroads to women’s health—and the Institute. 

Hana Sousa, a rising senior and chemical engineering major who grew up at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon River, had some early missteps as the leader of the Brazilian Students Association (BR@MIT). Now president of the ASA—the organization that oversees all student clubs on campus—she is using what she learned to help them navigate the intricacies of Institute policies. 

Sousa likes to focus on how to get things done—whether it’s working closely with Institute staff and her fellow students to help club leaders, or doing water-treatment research that can be applied to the Amazon River and her hometown.

Q: How did you get involved in the ASA? 

A: I was president of the Brazilian Club. I’m from Manaus, a two-million-person city in the North region. You can only get there on a boat or an airplane; there is only one road, and it goes to Venezuela. It’s in the middle of the Amazon, but Manaus feels very urban. 

When I arrived on campus, Brazilians didn’t have a club. The seniors didn’t re-register the year before, which is something you have to do, so we lost it—even though Brazilians have been at MIT since 1892!

My class has only four Brazilians, but in my sophomore year my friend and I realized we were losing the connections we had to each other. We could go to the dining hall and get dinner, but clubs give you a lot of perks—like access to funding and renting spaces on campus. We decided to recreate the club, but we did things that were not cool in terms of the bureaucracy at MIT, because we didn’t know. 

I got involved with ASA while I was the co-president of the Brazilian Club because I wanted to understand how things work. I learned a lot about other student organizations, the staff, and how the financial systems work. I wanted to share this knowledge, so I ran to become the ASA president. 

Q: What’s an example of something your club did that was not cool?

A: We wanted to put on a Brazilian harvest festival in the first term we were recognized. It was our first time hosting a large event. We didn’t know that, at MIT, especially if you’re running a large event, you have to register at least ten days in advance. Also, we had live music; you need to have a permit from the city of Cambridge for that. 

In the end, the event was beautiful and people had a very nice time. But the next Monday, we received an email explaining what we should have done differently. I apologized and said these were rookie mistakes. We learned what the MIT policies were, and the next year, we didn’t make any of the same errors. 

This really helped me understand MIT. The staff knows what resources are available, and they want students to have whatever MIT can give them. They don’t just tell us about the limits, they say why we are limited, and they offer another solution—when they can. 

That’s mainly how I advocate for students. If something is not standard, but it’s possible, I ask—“How can we do that?” 

Q: How do you balance the needs of students and MIT? 

A: The ASA is a student organization, so we are their peers. If we say no to someone’s application for a new club, that might be our friends. We also try to be their advocates. Because we have constant conversations with MIT staff, we mostly know what’s possible and whose door to knock on. 

Recently, the staff asked if we could move the ASA Midway—a big fair for student organizations that happens during orientation and campus preview weekend. The clubs set up booths; some of the performance groups have presentations. It’s a way for students to understand clubs and organizations. We have a database people can use to look them up, but it’s better to let students interact with them. We do it inside the ice rink, but our advisors on the staff thought it would be more visible outside. 

I went back and talked with the ASA board, and we all agreed it was not a good idea. We weren’t sure we would have enough space, and there were other things—some groups bring projectors, cultural groups like to have heaters for food to give out, performance groups need a lot of power outlets. Most of all, we thought the change would stress the students, and we already know how to do it in the ice rink, so we said no. They were fine with it.

Q: What was your path to MIT? What are you working on outside of the ASA?  

A: I loved chemistry growing up, and I got a scholarship to go to a school in another city; I was 16 years old and I had to move there by myself. I got a bronze medal in the International Chemistry Olympiad, so I decided to go to college in the US, but my English was very poor. I knew how to read English because of chemistry—after a point, there are no more chemistry books in Portuguese. But conversation? Listening? Not so good. I spent a gap year in a program that helped with my applications. They asked me to apply to ten schools. I just wanted to go to MIT. 

I chose to study chemical engineering because chemistry folks are very focused on reactions and understanding how systems work. The engineers want to apply this. 

This summer, for instance, I’m working on water treatment for the Amazon river. In my hometown, even though we are on the largest river in the world, some people don’t have access to clean water. Chemists know a lot about colloid suspensions—how clay interacts with water. As an engineer, I need to know this and use it to make informed decisions about how to improve water treatment systems. 

This is just like what got me to the ASA. I wanted to understand how things work at MIT. Getting involved and going every week to meetings helped me learn, and it helped me run the Brazilian club. Now I can do that for others, too.