UC Allocates $20K to Groups

The Undergraduate Council (UC) spent three-and-a-half hours debating and amending the semester’s final grants package during last night’s four-and-a-half hour long UC meeting.

Though the Finance Committee (FiCom) met at length last week to interview student group applicants and to develop the grants package presented yesterday, the bulk of last night’s meeting was spent debating the numerous amendments brought before the Council on the bill. Several student groups, including the International Relations Council, Franklin Afterschool Enrichment (FASE) program, and the Harvard College Democrats also presented on behalf of their grants.

In creating the inital grants package, FiCom acted as they have in past years, allocating money as if they had unlimited funds and funding all groups based on what they were eligible for, according to Finance Committee (FiCom) Chair Lori M. Adelman ’08.

Afterwards, FiCom reduced all awarded grants proportionally by 45 percent in order to accomodate the approximately $20,000 total available to student groups. Last year, FiCom had to reduce all grants by 35 percent.

“We wanted to treat all student groups fairly and consistently and so we thought that the same cut for every student group would be a more fair process than cutting some [groups] more than others,” Adelman said.

A FASE member sent an message over the Lowell-open email list criticizing the Council’s decision not to fund the vans used by FASE to run their programs. “Tutoring minority children in areas that you can’t get to by the T doesn’t rank on their to-fund list and it is disappointing,” wrote Amy S. Morgenstern ’06.

The Council chose not to fund the program due to FiCom’s policy of not funding transporation costs.

Earlier in the year, the UC overruled FiCom’s recommendation and awarded $2,000 to cover transportation costs to the Mission Hill Afterschool Program. Since that decision, FiCom has reemphasized that it will only subsidize MBTA subway tokens.

The UC received more than 350 student group grant applications for this final allocation and received about $40,000 more in grant requests this year compared to last year, said Adelman.

The UC funded approximately 300 of the student group grants by allocating $20,518.61 in cash awards, according to the grants package legislation.

In other business, the social programming board—created by the UC on April 9th and given $200,000 by the College on April 11th—came closer to materializing last night with the announcement by UC Vice President Annie R. Riley ’07 of the timeline for elections and applications to the newly-named College Events Board.

For those who wish to represent their House based on a popular vote, Riley announced a May 1st deadline for candidacy declaration, with campaigning and elections lasting from May 2nd to the 5th.

Riley said that candidates who wish to apply to the new Board independent of their House will be able to announce their candidacy on the website fun.college.harvard.edu. Applications to the board will be available online on May 5th and will be due on the 9th.

Last night, the UC also passed a resolution calling for offical representation of undergraduate students in the Presidential search process.

—Staff writer Brittney L. Moraski can be reached at bmoraski@fas.harvard.edu.