Some Financial Aid Students to Receive Ticket Vouchers

The Undergraduate Council’s “Financial Aid for Student Tickets Resolution” will take effect next year, thanks to $10,000 donations from the College’s Office of the Dean and the Office of Financial Aid.

Passed by the council on April 29, the bill seeks to provide $40 in vouchers to all 500 College students whose parents contribute less than $2,000 a year to their educational expenses. These vouchers may be used to help students attend activities such as formals and performances that would otherwise present them with too large a financial burden.

Rohit Chopra ’04, vice chair of the council’s Student Affairs Committee (SAC), said the vouchers will contribute significantly to campus social life.

“This program is going to strengthen student groups, especially House committees and arts groups, since they’ll be able to reach a larger audience,” Chopra said. “More importantly, it will address an issue that isn’t talked about too much, and that’s differences in socioeconomic status of students that go here. This is one more way the council is breaking down barriers to let every student take part in the Harvard undergraduate experience.”

The $20,000 donation will be enough to run the program next year alone, and council members said they are working with Harvard’s development office to establish a permanent endowment for the vouchers using alumni contributions.

Even before the passage of the resolution, the council received administrative support for the vouchers at the meeting of the Committee on College Life (CCL) on April 19.

But it was not until last week that the council knew where its first year’s funds would come from.

Last Thursday, council members met with Director of Financial Aid Sally C. Donahue, who agreed to provide half of the necessary funding.

The next day, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 pledged the other $10,000.

“SAC members have been talking to me, [Associate Dean of the College] David P. Illingworth ’71, and Sally Donahue all year about this, so last week I decided to help fund this for next year, so we can have a year seeing how the program works, and looking for a permanent funding source,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail. “I hope it’s a help to students who are now holding themselves out of popular social and cultural activities because of the cost of tickets.”

Chopra said finding alumni donors should not be a problem if the vouchers are received well next year.

“If the pilot program goes well, we’ll be looking to have it permanently endowed for future years,” Chopra said.

He said the final hurdle the council faces is convincing House Committees and student groups to accept the vouchers, but he does not foresee too much of a problem.

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t accept them,” he said.

Chopra also said council members will work to convince Houses and student groups to sell their event tickets through the Harvard Box Office in order to help students who use the vouchers retain their anonymity.

—Staff writer Alexander B. Ginsberg can be reached at ginsberg@fas.harvard.edu.