UC Funds Mission Hill Vans

The Undergraduate Council (UC) awarded a $2,000 grant to the Mission Hill After School Program last night in a controversial meeting that lasted almost four hours and prompted charges that the move would set a precedent of fiscal irresponsibility.

The UC overruled a recommendation from the council’s Finance Committee (FiCom), which had voted not to award Mission Hill any of the $2,500 that the group had requested for vans. Mission Hill sends volunteers to housing developments in Roxbury four afternoons a week to tutor and mentor children ages five to 13.

More than 80 Mission Hill supporters attended last night’s meeting, in an attempt to influence the council, according to Jonathan B.C. Tannen ’07, one of Mission Hill’s directors.

“If we don’t receive any UC funding, we would need to severely restructure our programming,” Tannen said before the meeting.

Several FiCom members cited an unwritten policy against funding transportation, and they said that creating an exception to this policy could jeopardize FiCom’s financial sustainability.

“There’s no question that to fund this would essentially be the death of FiCom,” the committee’s chair, Lori M. Adelman ’08, told the council. “We would have no more money.”

Adelman said more than 20 other groups that, like Mission Hill, are affiliated with the Phillips Brooks House Association, could seek UC funding to rent vans. “If we funded transportation for any more than a week, we would have no money,” she said.

But under the “General UC Grant Funding Guidelines” listed on the UC website, the UC does fund transportation in some circumstances. The website states, “transportation costs will be eligible for a subsidy, determined in relation to the lowest cost mode of transportation between the points of travel.”

FiCom member Randall S. Sarafa ’09 defended FiCom’s apparent inconsistency, saying the website was not “fully updated.”

Typically, the cheapest form of transportation has been the T, and several UC members questioned Mission Hill’s insistence on renting vans.

In a comical chalk board demonstration, Tannen showed that taking the subway would actually be more expensive, costing $2.50 per student each day, while vans cost $1.33.

Tannen also expressed concerns with the length of travel time on the T.

“There are very few Harvard undergraduates who can spend two hours out of their day to travel in addition to two hours of tutoring,” he said.

FiCom members said they harbored no ill will toward Mission Hill.

“We love Mission Hill unanimously,” Adelman said. But she said that in last night’s vote to overrule her committee’s policy, “there was something lost from the Finance Committee’s deliberative process that will eventually negatively impact our credibility.”

After two hours of questioning and debate, UC member Matthew R. Greenfield ’08 introduced an amendment to change the UC’s funding of Mission Hill from nothing to $2,000.

Greenfield said after the meeting that “$2,000 would be really the minimum amount for the folks from Mission Hill to be able to go in and do what they do.”

The amended resolution passed in a vote of 26 in favor to 11 against, with two abstentions.

After the meeting, UC President John S. Haddock ’07 said the UC should use this as an opportunity to reevaluate its transportation guidelines.

“It’s very clear that FiCom needs to take a very close look at its policies,” Haddock said.

—Staff writer Rachel L. Pollack can be reached at rpollack@fas.harvard.edu.