Half of Student Groups Fail To Re-register

If the College’s numbers on re-registration are any indication, almost half of all student groups went defunct over the summer—though groups simply failing to meet the deadline is the more likely explanation.

Five days after the Oct. 25 deadline had passed, only 172 groups had completed the mandatory re-registration process the College requires of returning groups every year. At the end of last year, there were 308 registered student groups.

“I’m totally confused,” Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II said.

“I felt like we made the system easier and I think we publicized it well.”

While he did not have statistics on how many groups re-registered by this time last year, McLoughlin said that more groups had missed the deadline this year.

The registration process involves submitting a list of officers, faculty advisers, a constitution and a budget and has been required of student groups every fall for the past several years.

For the first time this year, the registration process was moved online in order to make the process easier for students and more efficient for administrators, McLoughlin said.

“It could be that it’s a new system,” said Jessica L. Tibbits, the administrative coordinator for student activities.

McLoughlin said that the Office of Student Activities actively advertised the registration system and October deadline this fall. Their efforts included sending a letter to all groups and sending two e-mails to the past and present presidents and treasurers of organizations, McLoughlin said. He also said an additional e-mail will be sent this week to groups who have not yet registered.

But Lauren K. Truesdell ’06, the secretary and spokeswoman for the Harvard Republican Club (HRC), said that the HRC was unaware of the need to register.

“We didn’t know about the registration process because none of our leaders ever received a reminder about it,” Truesdell said.

She praised the administration for implementing the online registration system, calling it “very convenient,” but said that she wonders if the mailing list for student group leaders is outdated.

“The issue is publicity, since there is so much transience in student group leadership,” Truesdell said.

McLoughlin said that student groups that continue to hold off on registration will start having some of the benefits of College recognition stripped from them.

“I don’t want to take a draconic approach,” he said. “But there are going to be things that student groups aren’t going to get if they don’t register.”

The first of those things will be students’ right to list affiliation with the group in the yearbook. McLoughlin said he will be providing the list of registered groups to the yearbook this week, and those groups are the only ones that the publication will accept from seniors.

If groups do not register by late November they will lose the right to reserve rooms, and eventually the right to use the Harvard name, McLoughlin added.

Several large organizations other than the HRC have still not registered, including the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, The Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, and the Harvard Advocate.

If a student group still hasn’t registered in December, it will have to reapply and seek approval from the Committee on College Life.

When evaluating whether to reapprove the group, the committee will take the failure to register into account, McLoughlin said.

Last year 40 groups never registered and were declared defunct in December, including the Buddhist Community, the Fashion Design Club and the Tetris Society.

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.