Seton Proposes Term-Bill Fee Hike

If all goes as planned for Undergraduate Council President Noah Z. Seton '00, undergraduates will soon pay a $50 term-bill fee a year instead of the $20 each student currently contributes to the council's budget.

Seton will bring legislation before the council at Sunday's meeting to propose an increase in the optional fee, which is automatically charged to student's term bills.

If passed by the council, Seton's legislation will be handed on to Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68, who says he supports a term bill increase and is widely expected to approve the measure.

The proposal would then have to be approved by the full Faculty.

Seton says the increase is necessary because of the recent proliferation of student groups on campus. The council spends most of its budget on grants it awards to student groups. With more organizations clamoring for council funding, individual slices of the budget pie are getting smaller and smaller.

Applications from student groups for council funding peaked this year at 170. Seton says that when he was a first-year, only 70 groups applied.

"We have to recognize that the term bill fee is low compared to that at other universities and hasn't changed in a decade. Meanwhile, prices have gone up and the number of student organizations have increased," Seton says.

Unilateral Action

The legislation before the council this Sunday will not be the first proposal to try to increase the council's term bill. Last April, the matter was voted on--by students and not just council representatives--in a campus-wide referendum.

A majority of students were in favor of the measure, but too few voted to make the measure binding, and the matter was put off for another time.

Seton is now in the peculiar position of arguing that business he once said should be decided by the student body should now be decided solely by the council.

"It would be easy for us to pass a term bill increase right here [in council]," Seton said last March. "I don't think that would be fair to the student body."

Seton, who is sponsoring the legislation to increase the term bill, is now whistling a different tune. The council, he says, should be allowed to raise the term-bill fee without a campus-wide referendum.

"When 2,700 people voted in last year's [presidential] election, they trusted me to make the right decision, and [the term bill increase] is the right thing to do," Seton says.

Hugh P. Liebert '01, publisher of the conservative publication Salient, says he agrees with Seton's comments from last spring and feels the council is presumptuous to think that it has the authority to raise the fee it charges students on their term bills.

"I think it would be better for them to have another referendum because this is a serious change in the student government," he said. "No one votes for these [council] reps, so you should take the matter directly to the students."

The Leader

Seton has no such hesitations about the term bill increase.

"If The Crimson writes an editorial saying the term bill is outrageous, and all the students hate it, and I go down in history as a usurper, I will still think it was the right thing to do," he says.

Still, Seton must convince students skeptical of the council's competence that the council deserves more of their money.

"I'm not confident that they handle the money we give them well," Liebert says. "When [the council] finds money that's lying around, like the $40,000, it's really tough to argue that they should be getting more money."

The council announced last year that, because of accounting slip-ups, it had an unexpected additional $40,000 in its bank accounts. The money has been split up between various Council expenses, including this year's Springfest.

Still, some say the issue is not whether the council itself deserves more money, but whether the student groups who will benefit most from the increase deserve more money.

"My argument has never been that the [council] deserves more money because they're doing such a great job," said former council President Beth A. Stewart '00, who supports the increase.

But Seton says he is tired of hearing that the council doesn't matter to students' undergraduate experiences. It's become popular to dump on the council, he says, but in reality it is an effective presence on campus.

"When 1,200 people cram into a ballroom at the freshman formal and have a really great time, I'll be happy and won't pay much concern to people who say the [council's] irrelevant the next morning," he said.

Uncle Moneybags

A shortage of funds is not a new issue for the council. In early October, when the council approved its budget, Seton and Treasurer Sterling P. A. Darling '01 recognized that the increase of student groups requesting funds from the council had strained its budget to the breaking point.

"We can hold things together with shoestring and gum for one more year," Darling said last month, "but this is the last year that it can be done."

Additional funding, Seton explained, would have to be found.

But Seton said the term bill would not be increased unless the College matched any increase in the term bill with a donation from its own coffers--in effect giving the council an extra dollar for every additional dollar it raises from students.

"When you think of the success of the University's capital campaign," Seton said last month, "[the council's operating expenses] would be recouped in an afternoon of interest."

Even though legislation to increase the term bill will go before the council on Sunday, Lewis says he is not aware of any plans for matching funds from the college, and wouldn't support it anyway.

Stephen N. Smith '02, a council representative from Adams House, says he thinks it's a mistake to expect students to foot the additional costs of student groups on campus without the College kicking in funds in turn.

The College, he says, benefits immensely from an active and eclectic collection of student activities. The college, he says, entices prospective students with the promise of these groups and organizations, and it's only fair that the college pay its share to support them.

"Tuition has increased dramatically, but that increase is not going to student activities or student space," Smith says.

Lewis disagrees, citing Harvard's Student Activities Fund, the Office for the Arts, the Harvard Foundation, and the President's Public Service Fund as examples of administrative funding for student groups.

Additionally, Lewis says, if the council were given money by the College, Harvard would want some say in how that money was spent.

"Funds dispensed by the [council] are controlled entirely by students. If someone insisted on matching funds, we might insist on matching authority!" Lewis wrote in an e-mail message.

Seton, on his part, says that matching funds, while desirable, are unrealistic expectations for the council at this time.

"Do I think [the College should give the council matching funds]? Of course. Do I think that's going to happen soon enough to help students here now? No," Seton says.

Poisoning the Bill?

One possibility that concerns Seton is the prospect that John A. Burton '01 will try to amend the term-bill legislation.

Burton wants Seton's legislation to include a five-dollar term bill fee on all undergraduates to fund the operations of the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS).

RUS, which used to levy a $5-fee on all female undergraduates, lost its ability to term-bill students when Radcliffe merged with Harvard in early October.

However, Lewis says he won't approve a term bill proposal with such an amendment, and Seton is worried his legislation will fall with Burton's RUS proposal if the two are passed together, as one bill.

"It's a poison pill," Seton says. "The administration is not going to pass a term bill with that Radcliffe money on it."

In fact, he says, the two propositions--a larger council term bill and the existence of a Radcliffe one-- are completely unrelated issues.

"Just because they both have the word 'term bill' in them doesn't mean that they're the same bill," Seton says.