Term Bill Increase Essential

T his Sunday, the Undergraduate Council will consider my proposal to raise the term bill fee from $20 to $50. The council has never been the most popular organization on campus, and some of you may wonder why this increase is necessary. However, if you look at the council's role on campus, you'll find that it needs a great increase in resources in order to continue providing the services, events and grants that thousands of students on campus utilize.

First, there are the basics. The term bill fee is voluntary and is covered by financial aid. At the bottom of your fall tuition statement, there is a $20 fee which you may check off if you don't want to pay. From those $20 fees, the council gets its annual income of over $120,000. That means that right now, over 6000 students choose to fund campus events, services, and student group grants by paying the term bill fee. The fee has been $20 since 1988, even though tuition has nearly doubled in that time.

Where does the money go? At the beginning of each year, the council formulates its budget. We are mandated to spend at least 60 percent of the money on our grants fund, and this year, we chose to allocate about $100,000 to student group grants. That's 67.5 percent of this year's budget plus any rollover from grants that weren't picked up last year.

Is that enough money? Not at all. If you look at all of the grants funds on campus, including the Dean of the College's fund, the President's Public Services Fund, the Office for the Arts, and the Foundation, you'll find that the council is providing nearly half of the available funding for our student groups. And that money goes to everything from Radcliffe Rugby to the various plays and musicals that are performed on campus.

This year, there are almost 170 applications for council grants--for the fall semester alone! The average grant size is getting smaller, and an average $300 grant just isn't enough to let some of our most valued student groups survive.

Clearly, we need more money for more student-group grants. Rest assured that the majority of the term bill increase will go in that direction--right back in the hands of students, so that they can put on all the events and activities that provide the backbone for college life here at Harvard.

Two years ago, former council president and vice-president Beth A. Stewart '00 and Samuel C. Cohen '00 proposed raising an endowment by soliciting our alumni in order to fund student groups in their perpetuity. After proposing this to the administration, it was decided that the College should give an additional $25,000 per year to student groups. The council would have had to raise about $500,000 to get this much per year, so we agreed to the deal. Now, even that additional $25,000 is not enough to fund our skyrocketing number of student groups.

What else does the council do? Well, the rest of our money goes to campus wide events and services: the First-Year Formal, Springfest, the shuttles to the airport at Thanksgiving and Winter Break, and shuttle buses to Yale. The fact of the matter is that since 1988, the prices for buses, hotel ballrooms, and big-name bands have gone way up.

When I was a first-year, people hated Springfest because the council could only afford to bring a band called God Street Wine to perform. Maybe 500 people showed up. Last year, over 3,000 people came to Springfest because the Violent Femmes were a bigger name and the rides and games that we had were more fun. But we basically scraped the bottom of the barrel for money and this year, we may not be able to do the same because we don't have any extra money lying around like we did last year.

All of those services and events cost money--Violent Femmes cost $22,500. The hotel ballroom for the First-Year Formal--which over 1,000 first-years attend--costs several thousand dollars. If we ever want to have an even more popular band and an event that rivals Penn's Spring Fling, we'll just have to find more money to do it with.

We have negotiated a deal with the administration whereby the College organizes transportation for thousands of students who will ride next week to Yale and thousands more who will ride the week after to the airport. These services are provided to the community at the lowest price that will cover their cost. The council doesn't run a profit from any of these events or services. If we want to hire a band and host an event that rivals other schools'--while continuing to provide the convenient and popular services such as shuttle buses--we will need a larger budget.

And raising the term-bill fee isn't our first idea of how to raise more money for campus student groups, events and services. We've tried raising funds and convincing the administration to put more of the University's money into our budget. However, a term bill increase is the only way to raise enough money to make a significant difference.

Those are the reasons for a term bill increase. Please talk to your council representatives about it this weekend before our meeting and tell them how you feel. I hope you will agree with me that the increase is the right policy right now.

Noah Z. Seton '00 is a government concentrator in Kirkland House. He is president of the Undergraduate Council.