Young Dem Aims to Rally Students
For the second year in a row, Ramya Kumar (CAS’10) was elected to the female collegiate seat on the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee
Last spring, Ramya Kumar (CAS’10) won a special election for the female collegiate seat on the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee. On March 8, Kumar was elected again to the same position and will serve a four-year term.
“It is a very exciting time to be a young Democrat, and I hope to continue to get students more involved with my party,” says Kumar, one of the University’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Scholars. “Ultimately, my goal is to get our generation to be more aware of current events and to be active in the political process regardless of their party affiliation.”
As a member of the youth and affirmative action subcommittees, Kumar works with the Lowell Democratic City Committee to plan the state convention in her hometown of Lowell and helps to promote the state party’s Diversity Internship Program.
She also works with BU student groups and the University’s Howard Thurman Center, as well as the Caucus of Minority Democrats, to encourage BU students to run as a youth or affirmative action add-on delegate (one not elected through a caucus) and to become more involved in selecting this year’s Democratic National Convention delegates.
Kumar credits Katherine Kennedy, director of the Thurman Center and of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Scholarship Program, with helping her to understand Thurman’s philosophy of searching for common ground. Howard Thurman (Hon.’67), a Baptist minister and a key figure in the civil rights movement, was dean of Marsh Chapel from 1953 to 1965. He died in 1981. “It is this philosophy that inspires me to promote diversity and unity within the Massachusetts Democratic Party,” Kumar says.
Rebecca McNamara can be reached at ramc@bu.edu.
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