The Council Needs You

The Undergraduate Council recently voted to allocate $1,000 to the fight against homophobia at Harvard. This allocation was structured as "challenge funding."

One of the council's major roles is to allocate money to student groups. Every year, the finance committee receives many funding applications from various student groups. This money is allocated on the basis of need: The finance committee and the council make a conscious effort to avoid bias in deciding the funding amounts. This process is used to make two types of grants: grants to groups for general expenditures and project-based grants. This process should remain objective and its integrity is protected by the council constitution

But the council is more than a distributor of funding. We also have a leadership role in the Harvard community. Acting in this role, we frequently pass resolutions to express our concern about issues that affect the community. Such an issue was the string of homophobic incidents that occurred earlier this school year.

When the council's student affairs committee considered a resolution condemning these incidents, many of the opinions voiced sounded familiar to council critics and members: We were passing another resolution and expressing another opinion without taking action. We were allowing our leadership role with regards to homophobia, one of the most pressing issues in this community, to be reduced to an eloquent litany of whereas clauses.

Challenge funding is a way to take further action on this issue. The idea behind challenge funding is that there are students and student groups interested in dealing with issues such as homophobia and that the council, as a legislative body with a leadership role in this community, should provide support to these groups and individuals.

Challenge funding is completely separate from the objective process that the council conducts when it awards "project based grants." Arguments that challenge funding violates the $500 spending cap on project based grants are off target. Challenge funding is distinct from project based grants--it is more like the council allocating funds for an event that it will run itself. The council will be, in a sense, outsourcing the planning and execution of this event to student groups.

But we will remain responsible for setting the event's basic parameters and giving all expenditures final approval. When the council's size is reduced to 50 members next year, this type of cooperative approach will become even more vital.

To make challenge funding work, we need the help of concerned students and student groups in the Harvard community. Student groups that have ideas for raising awareness of and combating homophobia in our community should submit an application for this challenge funding. Such an idea would include an event, a series of events or some other form of action to raise awareness of and to combat homophobia. Creativity is encouraged.

We hope that challenge funding will become a way for the council to provide tangible action in exercising its leadership role in the Harvard community. The council should continue to do what it has shown that it can do well: objectively distribute student group funding, plan events such as Springfest, lobby the administration for changes such as universal key card access and provide services such as UC Books.

But the council must also not be afraid to amplify its voice on pressing issues in the community and serve a leader among Harvard students and student groups. Challenge funding is a way to bring about this amplification. However, the success of challenge funding depends on the students and student groups of Harvard College.

Joseph P. Chase '02, a Crimson editor, is a social studies concentrator in Dunster House. He is an Undergraduate Council representative and a co-sponsor of the challenge funding bill.