Ballet Loses Funds Under New Guidelines

Recent changes to a College-administered fund for student organizations have posed budget problems for at least one campus arts group.

Changes in groups’ eligibility for grants from the Harvard College Student Activities Fund (SAF) have cost the Harvard Ballet Company $500—roughly 10 percent of its semester budget, said Laurie B. Schnidman ’05, the company’s treasurer.

The SAF is undergoing a one-year trial with new guidelines, which provide funding for only campus-wide social events. The fund originally supported a wide variety of undergraduate student group projects.

“It may have funded anything from a conference on international health to putting on a show,” former Undergraduate Council President Rohit Chopra ’04 said last November, when the changes went into effect.

Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd wrote in an e-mail that the trial period is a response to a student desire for a larger number of organized social events on campus, as reflected in senior surveys and other polls used to gauge student life.

Council President Matt W. Mahan ’05 said the adjusted SAF rules help to fulfill the fund’s original purpose.

“We started the year with a fund that for the most part was giving groups $50 each semester for operational expenses, since the number of student groups has grown substantially since SAF’s inception but the fund has remained at $25,000,” Mahan wrote in an e-mail.

“The fund was originally intended to go to large projects—those that would likely not be funded by the [Undergraduate Council]—so we decided to try a return to that for one year,” he added.

The SAF changes were made by the Committee on College Life (CCL), a student-Faculty committee on which Mahan sits.

The Harvard Ballet Company has not qualified for funding this year under the new guidelines. While Schnidman said she was not given a specific reason why the company does not qualify for the grants, she felt the College rejected their application because she thought they did not view the performances as social events.

“In some social circles, ballet and performances are considered a very big social event,” Schnidman added.

But Mahan wrote in an e-mail that a group that had received SAF money in the past would not receive it during the trial period if “their grant application was for something non-social or non-free.”

The Harvard Ballet Company charges for admission to its performances.

Schnidman said it was “totally possible” that the company was not funded by the SAF this year because the company charges admission. But Schnidman added that the SAF’s reasons for not funding the company should have been made clear to the group.

The guidelines for SAF grants make no mention that an event must be free of charge in order to qualify.

Events that the SAF has subsidized so far this year include Harvard Ballroom’s semi-formal holiday dance and another dance organized by the Catholic Students Association.

Despite the ticket sales and $950 in grants from the council, the Office for the Arts (OFA) and the Ann Radcliffe Trust, the company still has difficulty covering the cost of costumes and the licensing fees for the ballets they hope to stage. The group, which does not have a large base of graduates, relies heavily on donations from members’ parents, Schnidman said.

Other groups have not encountered the same funding problems faced by the Harvard Ballet Company. The Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Company is sufficiently funded by a grant from the OFA, and occasionally by council grants, said company director Lise T. Lipowsky ’05. Mainly Jazz is also funded by dues and by sources of grant money other than the SAF, according to group director Melissa E. Miller ’04.

Because these groups do not have to purchase rights to the dances they perform, the funds they receive are sufficient, Harvard Ballet Company former Co-director Brynn L. Jinnett ’05 said.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones receive no funding from the University, said Kathie S. Koo ’04, president of the group. The conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO) is paid partly by the OFA, but the group is otherwise independently funded, said HRO President Ethan L. Gray ’05.

The CCL, which considers applications for the SAF grants, will discuss how the new grant policy has affected arts groups at its meeting tomorrow.

“Perhaps we can designate a certain portion of the fund to art projects that involve the community in some way,” Mahan said.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.