CCL To Help With Campus Website

The Committee on College Life (CCL) agreed at their meeting yesterday to collaborate with the Undergraduate Council (UC) on its Student Online Resources Initiative.

The initiative aims to create a website that will consolidate information and services for social and extracurricular organizations on campus—in addition to providing contacts for College resources, such as University Health Services.

UC Student Affairs Committee Vice-Chair John S. Haddock ’07, who sponsored and wrote the bill, said this initiative is an effort to help students navigate the multitude of programs and events at Harvard.

Haddock and UC Student Affairs Committee Chair Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06 presented the plan to the CCL yesterday to ask for University support and funding.

According to Chadbourne and Haddock, the website would create a more widely-used central website that would include a calendar of campus events and links to sites relevant to student social and extracurricular life.

“The website is a launching pad and nexus of resources for both individual students and for student groups,” Chadbourne said.

The website would also include space for student groups that do not have their own websites to launch “small-scale” sites on the UC’s page.

“The UC recognizes that the array of student group resources offered today would greatly benefit from centralization under a single website for social and extracurricular life,” Haddock wrote in an e-mail.

Members of the CCL, which include College administrators and students, all responded positively to both the idea of the website and also to a potential collaborative effort between the administration and the UC.

“I was very excited by the reaction at the meeting,” said Chadbourne. “I sensed a lot of excitement about the initiative.”

“The UC is dramatically expanding its role on campus in coordinating student organizations and offering them the funding, services, and support they need to contribute to campus life,” Haddock wrote.

A steering committee, comprised of UC members, representatives from student service groups, and various College administrators will meet soon to discuss the website, according to Chadbourne.

Chadbourne said he hopes the committee will lay the groundwork for the website before the end of the year, adding that the website may be up and running by the fall.

Also at yesterday’s meeting, the CCL agreed to recognize the Harvard College Party Organization after deferring their decision of approval in February due to questions relating to the organization’s website, hahvahdparties.com.

The CCL recognized eight other organizations, which represented a range of arts, community service, and academic interests.

—Liz C. Goodwin contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Nicole B. Urken can be reached at urken@fas.harvard.edu.