Undergraduate Council Approves Budget

Undergraduate Council representatives passed a $489,000 budget for the 2013-2014 school year as discussion about UC finances dominated the first general meeting of the fall semester on Sunday.

The Council budget, which draws the bulk of its funds from a $75 fee term-billed to all Harvard College students, decreased by 7.9 percent from last year due to a policy change made by the UC last semester to ensure that all funds received in a single school year are used that year and not rolled over into the next year. Historically, the UC has relied on this “roll-over funding” as part of its budget.

“The…overriding philosophy that we adopted in the last year is that we want to spend all the money that we get from the term bill in a given academic year in that same academic year,” UC President Tara Raghuveer ’14 said at the meeting.

The largest portion of the budget—66.5 percent—is given out as grants to student group activities. Almost 30 percent is allocated to the House Committees of the 12 residential Houses and Dudley House, and two percent is set aside for funding individual student initiatives. The remaining $8,000 is being used as the operations fund for the Council.

Before voting on the budget, new and returning representatives asked questions and held a preliminary discussion on ideas to reform the budget, a priority for this semester, according to Raghuveer.

Several representatives suggested looking into modifying the $146,000 in funding given to the 12 Houses and Dudley.

Representatives pointed out that although each residential House is allotted the same amount of funding from the UC, some Houses had other funding sources for their respective House Committees, resulting in significant discrepancies in the budgets of various Houses.

Student Initiatives Chair and Kirkland House representative Barr Yaron ’14 suggested representatives look into how Yale College funds each of its residential dorms, in which each “college” operates on the same budget, even accounting for outside funding.

Responding to a question about a UC proposal to double the term-bill fee, Raghuveer and UC Treasurer and Mather House representative Jonathan Y. Li ’14 told representatives that the status of that proposal was in limbo after Evelynn M. Hammonds resigned from her position as dean of the College earlier this year.

“[The term-bill increase] was something we put on Dean Hammonds’ desk and with the change that happened, we’re going to have to make sure [interim] Dean [of the College Donald H.] Pfister is on board,” said Li.